Relentless Sparks
by The.Velvet.Dusk
Summary: "An imaginary force dragged him across the brown lawn. It was what unfailingly occurred when Rory Gilmore was involved." We all know that Luke and Lorelai get married someday. So what happens when the pair's nuptials throw Rory and Jess together into a series of rather fortunate events? Lit, multi-chap, set post-finale. COMPLETE!
1. Confetti & Crystal

_**HI! I'm trying my hand at a multi-chap GG lit fic, so please feel free to give me the good and the bad in that little review box. I welcome all criticism and encouragement :)**_

_**This is the first of what will most likely be (at least) a ten chapter fic. It takes place post S7, at least 6 months to a year into the future after the finale. Hope you like it!**_

* * *

Tick, tick. Time bomb.

Couldn't she go put some more clothes on? It was December. This was absurd.

And meanwhile, a manicured hand grasped at his, linking him to an alternate universe. He was a publisher, he ran a business, he used a calendar. He had a steady girlfriend, bought her a birthday present, had met her parents.

But somehow he felt just like that seventeen-year-old ragamuffin kid with a head full of gel and his heart locked on the one thing he couldn't have.

London giggled at something the faceless person in front of them had said, but it barely registered in Jess' sphere of courtesy. He robotically nodded his head as crowds swarmed in and out of the Dragonfly's dining room in a bustle and blur of hometown chatter and excitement. In the midst of it all, she glimmered like a comet in a golden dress. It was shorter and tighter than anything he had ever seen her in before—still conservative enough for the setting, but just snug enough to have brutally turned his head. An endless stream of townspeople had hovered over her, oohing and ahhing over her glamorous jet setting lifestyle. Luke had informed him of the gig she had landed after her time on the Obama campaign trail, a freelance correspondent with some major news conglomerate. He felt this strange and undeserved tug of pride knowing that she had achieved the illusive dream job. Not that he had anything to do with such an accomplishment, but he was proud nonetheless.

That was until he was forlornly trapped in the same room with her while she wore _that. _Her legs stretched on for days as she paraded around in an incessant display of shimmering supremacy. An inexplicable anger consumed him, firing instinctively somewhere in his traitorous gut. This was a prehistoric desire. A flame long extinguished…so where did this consuming double-cross of the mind come from?

He excused himself from the droning exchange going on before him, giving his oblivious girlfriend a squeeze on the elbow as he passed. His eyes charted a smooth course along the antique hardwood floors, praying that the townspeople would still believe him to be some terrifying spectacle of rebellious hostility. His already meager social skills were plummeting with an unmatched ferocity. God, he hated this place.

Bypassing a squealing mob of kindergarteners with noisemakers and confetti, Jess meandered through a set of double doors that opened out into the shadowy landscape. The cold snap of air beckoned him forward; maybe it could numb him straight to graceful oblivion. It might be nice there.

* * *

"I bet the men in Moscow were eating you up like whipped cream, doll face."

As per usual, Rory felt a pressing heat make itself home on her pale cheeks at Babette's suggestive wink. Struck speechless, she just shook her head and laughed weakly. Exhaustion was hastily setting deep in her bones—her mini assignment crammed into the week between Christmas and New Year's had left her reeling in a befuddling whir of time zones. If that were not enough to effectively zap her party spirit, the constant flux of well-wishers had been absolutely draining. She loved them so dearly, but she just wanted to crawl up somewhere remote and not come back out for the next thousand years.

Not that the walloping mix of hot disappointment and acute distraction of her breakup was helping to lift her mood. Six months of long distance phone calls and preoccupied emails—with the occasional date thrown in—seemed to be sinking miserably into the abyss. Another relationship marked with the bitter aftertaste of failure. And as if that were not enough of a humbling barb, she was forced to observe another botched attempt at love strut around with some sickeningly gorgeous blonde. Why was Jess even here? Surely a tame Stars Hollow bash was not his textbook definition of ringing in the New Year.

It certainly wasn't hers…this had been a very last minute shift, but her mother had persuaded her that it would be better than inhaling Rocky Road alone in the city to the sound of Ryan Seacrest on her TV set. And as horrendous as that would have been, showing up here alone was possibly worse.

A rowdy burst of frustration and sadness threatened its way to the surface, forcing Rory to sidestep an oncoming townsperson and make a speedy escape. She snagged a crystal flute of champagne from the sweeping arm of an overeager server and slipped through the kitchen with anonymity. The side door remained pleasantly vacant, so she ambled out into the refreshing chill of winter blackness. She sank down onto the obscure stone steps and allowed the suppressed sobs to split open into the indefinite stretch of milky stars. Just as the sound began to subside, the vibrating interruption of her cell phone from inside her clutch sent a few fresh tears spilling through her web of lashes. _Connor_.

After a few stabilizing breaths, Rory fumbled to answer. "Hello?"

* * *

The achingly familiar cadence reached his ears before his eyes could discover the nearly undetectable swatch of gold. She had tucked herself into a forgotten corner on the back stairs, hiding under the cover of an aged oak tree. Her voice rose through the frosty branches, allowing him to catch choppy snippets of her spirited refutations.

"You know that isn't true...can't believe you would…No! Then just—yeah, I'm sure she is…Bye."

For a static instant, he debated if it would be better to just take a few creeping steps backward, or if—

"Jess?!"

Well screw that.

"Hey. Nice night out, huh?" He took an involuntary step back, not wanting to intrude.

"Yeah, just spectacular." Her attempt at dry disdain floundered in the wake of an obstinate sniffle. "How much of that did you hear?"

Jess contemplated the effectiveness of a lie, an easy eject button on what was clearly a very personal moment. But there was something in her dejected expression, even at a dim distance, which required the truth. "Enough to know things aren't so great between you and the banker."

A mirthless laugh contorted her delicate features. "Yeah, that sums it up."

An imaginary force dragged him across the brown lawn. It was what unfailingly occurred when Rory Gilmore was involved. Settling onto the impermeable step next to her, Jess hesitated to comment. He knew he should stay the heck out of it. He had shamelessly thrown himself across the fragmented altar of her tangled relationships before, and it somehow never worked out for him. Those days were over. Lesson learned.

But the poignant smudges of mascara underneath her shining cobalt eyes summoned his every last undignified impulse. "His loss, Rory. I'm sorry he's treating you like that."

She shook her head briskly. "No, it isn't his loss, it is definitely mine. I messed this one up big time. I'm surprised it took him this long to call me on it."

His hand landed on her upper arm, which was haphazardly exposed to the Connecticut wind. "I find that incredibly hard to believe."

"You don't understand, Jess. I…I was barely ever there, always off on the next assignment…I haven't had my feet on solid ground in I don't know how long. If I was home, I was finishing an article, swamped with meetings, or collapsing with fatigue. All we've done lately is fight. Connor deserves so much more…"

Jess didn't know much about the guy, just a few tidbits that Luke had leaked here and there. From his uncle's understandably biased viewpoint, Connor the New York bank executive was less than impeccable. The words "stuffy" and "pompous" may have been thrown out in comical combination with a few colorful choice words. He somehow doubted, however, that Rory would find that information to be of any aid under the present circumstances.

"Then he wasn't the right one. Not if he didn't get how big this job is for you." His hand absently stroked her lithe arm, restoring some much needed heat to her icy skin.

She sniffled again, swiping away the last vestige of her glass tears. "What about you, Jess?"

"What about me?"

"Have you found the right one? I saw you with that Scarlett Johansson lookalike." The casual edge in her voice set off a little warning in his head, but he promptly ignored it.

"That's London. I met her a few months ago. And I don't know yet…if she's the right one, that is."

A sideways glance and upturned mouth prepared him for the mocking to come. "London, huh?"

"Yep."

"Is she calling?"

Only a solitary second passed before his own derisive smirk appeared. "The Clash. Nice one."

"Thanks. What does she do?" An innocent tone accompanied the gentle lift of her brow, but he would bet his favorite leather jacket that she would later use this as ammunition against him in a ranting dialogue with Lane or Lorelai.

"She's kind of between jobs right now, but she's done some modeling and a few TV commercials. She wants to get into fashion design someday."

Rory let out an ambiguous hum, withholding any further comment. An irrepressible shiver rattled its way through her slim figure as the winter wind stirred her chestnut tresses.

His hands slipped up and down her arms, his forehead creased. "I think it's time you went inside. That dress is not exactly weather appropriate."

"What, you don't like it?" she asked with an artificial frown.

"What's not to like? You clean up well, Gilmore." He stood, then bent to pull her up into a matching stance.

"Me? You're wearing a tie! I don't think I have ever seen you in a tie, Jess."

He smiled, flashing a full grin that was reserved for a short list of people. "It is a special occasion, you know?"

As if on cue, the distant roar of "ten, nine, eight," began to sound from within the inn. Their eyes locked in a notorious meeting of raw copper and spellbinding cerulean. The celebratory countdown marched impetuously on, wrapping the two lone drifters in a foggy trance. A motionless melody wove through the crisp air.

"Three, two, one, HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

The raging festivities played on vaguely in the background. Rory blinked a rapid fluttering pattern and smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles out of her dress. He could tell she was nervous, could read it in every line of her flawless face.

"Happy New Year, Rory." As hard as he tried to keep a cool detachment in his tone, the effort was futile. She had known him too long—had dug in too deep—to be fooled.

A genuine smile perched on her sly lips. "Happy New Year, Jess."

An unstated consensus formed in the turbulent current between their eyes. Both leaned in for a chaste kiss. The impact of that second, just a brief tick of the clock on the first night of the year, sent a jolt of electric energy through them both. Jess pulled away immediately. A tiptoeing reminiscence anchored him to the spot. Her eyes widened in shared astonishment. That old relentless spark crackled, pleading for another shot of evoked ecstasy.

Rory timidly reached for his hand, incasing his fingers with hers. It was all the encouragement he needed.

Jess captured her lips in a fervent embrace, his eagerness met with equaled recklessness from the ethereal figure before him. Another shockwave ignited his veins as he sought the curve of her slender waist. Her body had just pressed flush against his when the harsh ring of reality drove them apart like shrapnel.

He removed the offending cellphone from his pants pocket, clearing his throat several times in a pathetic attempt to reclaim control. "It's London. She's looking for me."

"Right, of course…" Rory nodded automatically, suddenly painfully aware of how thin her dress was in the unkind midnight breeze.

He jerked his head wordlessly toward the side door and she followed him back into the kitchen. A distant sentence hovered on Rory's fickle lips, but the words were impossibly stuck somewhere in the ensnaring quicksand of her topsy-turvy brain. Her mouth parted in belated effort, but Lorelai bounded up to them just as they entered the main hall.

"There you are, sweets! Guess what?" Her eyes were glossier than usual as she flapped her hand around wildly. "You'll never guess, so I'll just tell you! I'm getting married, Rory! Luke just asked me to marry him—again!"


	2. Third Degree Burns

The coolness of March twilight cloaked her fragile white skin, yet Rory was smoldering to the point of combustion. Red wine was her lone friend tonight. Her mother was positively radiant with the lure of heaping gifts, boundless attention, and her husband-to-be faithfully at her side. Lane was emceeing the engagement party, plus Hep Alien was taking the stage soon with a special set dedicated to the couple of honor. Rory was uncomfortably floating, skulking in the outskirts like the town loner.

And if she were being downright honest with herself, what had truly soured her mood from the start of this tedious shindig was the embedded image of that curvaceous bleach-head groping at Jess' behind. Honestly, get a freaking room. All of this glum lurking had eventually banished her to this sullen spot next to the roaring bonfire, glowering interminably into the reddish orange flames with her beloved glass of wine in hand. Maybe if she just took a few measured steps toward the acrimonious black smoke she could just fade away into the inky dusk and—

"If you stand much closer, someone's gonna mistake you for the gooey part of a s'more."

The velvety voice startled her, causing her embittered revelry to evaporate into the clouds. She didn't even bother looking at him, but obstinately kept her gaze on the glowing embers and tossed back the rest of her glass. It burned all the way down. "Where's Vicki Cristina Barcelona? Now you gotta help me, are you dating Vicki? Or Cristina? I never could keep those girls straight."

She saw his shrug in her peripheral vision. "Her name is London."

"Oh come on, Jess. You used to be more fun." Rory snickered, her eyes flicking in his direction.

He quirked an eyebrow. "And you used to be more sober."

"What?" Her eyes were saucers of incredulousness. "I _am _sober!"

His eyebrow flew a notch higher.

"Hmm. You don't believe me?" She took a sustained step toward him, her dimpled chin jutting out in a salute to the moon.

"Come on, Rory, that wine glass has been glued to your hand all night. It's gotta be an appendage at this point."

Her full pink lips twitched impishly upward. "So you've been watching me, huh? That's interesting. What would Vicki think about that?"

"Cristina," he muttered as his hand raked through his already mussed hair.

"What?"

"You mean Cristina. Scarlett Johansson played Cristina." Jess' voice was nearly indiscernible. Rory, however, was not in the mood to let him get away with his slip.

"So you admit it!" She poked him in the chest, her cerulean eyes sparkling in the firelight. "They're probably twins! I mean she looks—"

The buzzing in her brain diverted her, distorting her steps as she stumbled madly sideways, careening in an inescapable crash course for the blaze before her. ..

But a pair of strong arms circled her, rescuing her from her fiery fate. Jess righted her swaying frame and swallowed resolutely. His adrenaline ran high with the immeasurable force of passing terror. Those mystic blue eyes peered straight up at him, wide and imploring. "How bout we take a little tour of the party? I think our current location may be a bit precarious given your dubious state."

Rory nodded ever so slowly, acutely aware of his remaining hold around her middle. The flickering light underscored the cryptic flecks of amber and gold in his eyes. He slowly released her from the security of his arms, but then moved an earnest hand to her petite wrist. "C'mere. Let's get you sobered up before you pull an Amy Winehouse."

Rory allowed him to navigate her away from the fire pit and followed his indisputable path toward the tables of refreshments. She teetered unevenly over a coarse tree root, but Jess was there. He wrapped a solid arm around her slight waist and steered her to safety. His arm lingered there as if reluctant to leave its old station of longstanding familiarity. She kept silent, afraid that a single word would interfere with what she assumed was a portal of reminiscence—here he was taking care of her, touching her, outdoing the ambiguous tingle of wine in her system and swapping it for an all-consuming firing of the synapses.

"Here," he mumbled, pressing a Styrofoam cup of black coffee into her hand.

"Thank you." She knew she should be embarrassed by her disorderly behavior, but it somehow failed to daunt her. In the months that had passed since their impulsive New Year's kiss—which had unquestionably surpassed the bounds of a platonic embrace—the notion of Jess had been skipping though her treacherous subconscious. It was _Jess_. Every time she assumed that book was sealed, another chapter magically wrote itself contrary to her will.

"And this probably wouldn't hurt either." He passed her a chunk of bread from the impressive display of gourmet dips, all the outstanding work of Sookie's culinary prowess.

She fought to suppress her growing grin. He had never been like this during their whirlwind relationship over the course of senior year. How can someone take care of you if they can't even take care of themselves? This Jess, the Jess that watched her attentively as she chewed a bite of the baguette that he had personally presented to her, was the refined adult version of the guy who couldn't even return her phone calls.

"What are _you_ looking at?" he asked with a surly smirk.

Okay, so he wasn't completely different. "You. That's allowed, isn't it? Unless you object, Dodger."

His thin mouth stretched upward and his eyes divulged a high degree of incredulity. "Haven't heard that one lately."

"Maybe you aren't hanging with the right people then," she replied as she sipped on her coffee.

Something ignited behind his fixed gaze. "Maybe not…Rory, I—"

An obtrusive flash blinded them, interrupting Jess midsentence. "Jeeze, what the…"

"Kirk!" Rory grimaced, her brow scrunched. "Delete that picture! I wasn't even looking!"

The eccentric little man frowned. "Lorelai said she wanted candid shots. That was candid."

Rory cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "My mom didn't hire you to take pictures."

He cleared his throat nervously, his expression the usual mix of cluelessness and intensity. "Well no, not exactly, but she said she needed to see a portfolio to consider me for the wedding and I can't get my old portfolio. It's at my mom's house and I haven't been back there since she banished me from the property. I mean that was just last week and I'm sure she's cooled down since then, but Lulu's place is nice and I don't want—"

"Kirk!" Both Rory and Jess yelled in unison, then turned to face each other in bemused disbelief.

"Right, sorry." He clumsily shuffled his feet as he continued to stare at them.

Rory could literally feel the exasperation rolling off of Jess. In a mission to save Kirk from forthcoming death or injury, she pasted on her sweetest smile and dove in. "Is there something we can do to help?"

He eagerly shook his head, his eyes gleaming with the utmost enthusiasm. "Well a candid snapshot of the best man and maid of honor on the dance floor at the engagement party might be a nice portfolio piece."

"Oh, I'm not sure the best man is much for dancing," she responded, stifled laughter clearly in her voice.

"It's not exactly candid if the best man has his arm twisted," Jess protested darkly.

Kirk fidgeted. "So is that a yes or no?"

"Yeah, Jess, is that a yes or no?" Rory tugged on his arm, her eyes soundlessly begging for a yes.

He exhaled a string of curses under his breath that triggered a giggle fit from the tipsy girl at his side. "Fine. But _you_—" he growled, his gaze boring into Rory, "—are gonna pay for this."

"Lovely. Do you accept American Express?" She winked as she grasped his hand and yanked him in the direction of the parquet dance floor. The last notes of a clichéd 80s song faded out as a slower tune took its place. The strains of Ron Pope's Fireflies floated through the town square, draping the partygoers in its sad serenade. Rory blinked, recognizing it immediately. "Do you know this one?"

Jess nodded solemnly. His arms found their way around her, one hand settling on her hip and the other seeking the small of her back. She followed suit, winding her arms up around his shoulders.

"Are you…Jess, are sure it's okay for us to…" Her question dangled in the displaced air.

"Yes. I'm sure." His eyes veered somewhere beyond Rory. Just when she supposed that was all he was choosing to disclose, he went on. "London has an audition in the morning so she couldn't stay late. She's already on her way back to the city."

It was Rory's turn to nod. She honestly didn't know what to do with this surplus of information. The blinding light of Kirk's neurotic photo snapping broke her train of thought.

Jess audibly snarled. "How many do we let him take before that camera meets the sidewalk?"

His lips were curiously close to her ear, sending a trail of goose bumps across her creamy skin. She resisted the wistful visions in her head, attempting to stay grounded in amicable reality.

"I'll call him off," she whispered with a grin. Rory turned her head, creating a little needed distance between them. "Okay, Kirk, I think you should have some keepers."

"But I just found this setting that—"

"Look, I think I saw Babette and Miss Patty chasing the new bag boy around near the gift table. Now that's the definition of candid. You shouldn't miss that!"

His head perked up as he scrambled to gather his meager equipment. "Thanks for the tip!"

She turned back to Jess, ready to give him permission to abandon their slow dance. But before she could utter a word, she felt his hold tighten. "You made that up."

She tilted her head to the side. "Perhaps I did."

"The duchess of Stars Hollow caught lying to her dutiful public. Color me shocked." His voice dripped with wry cynicism.

Rory leaned closer in mock conspiracy. "You won't tell, will you?"

He pretended to consider her request. "Hmm. I suppose my allegiance has never really been with the townspeople…"

"Yeah, I suppose not." She smirked, recollections of his old pranks playing through her mind.

A lull filled the lessening space between them as the words of the song trickled through the revolving couples. _All that I know about us is that beautiful things never last, that's why fireflies flash…_ The haunting melody sobered their playful dialogue. With an uncharacteristic blast of boldness, partially a residual effect of her abundant red wine consumption, Rory allowed her fingers to thread into the hair at the base of Jess' skull. He stiffened for an instant, but the harmonious swaying of their bodies persisted.

"Jess?"

He looked wary at her pondering tone. "Yes, Rory?"

"Do you ever wonder how things would be if it had been…different."

"That is an awfully comprehensive philosophical endeavor, Miss Gilmore."

Rory glared impatiently. "Between us, Jess. You knew what I meant."

A line appeared between his eyebrows. "Yes, I knew what you meant. And…yes, I've speculated…"

"And?"

He shook his head. "And what, Rory? What's the point? Come on, this is a minefield conversation and I don't want to have it with you when you are drunk."

She bit down on her lower lip. "Like I'm supposed to believe that's the reason you don't want to talk about it."

"I'm sorry that I don't want to stroll down freaking memory lane with you, but I've come a long way since all of that crap, okay? I prefer not to dwell on how much of an idiot I used to be back—"

She abruptly stopped moving with the music. "Jess! You were only seventeen. I don't think of you that way and neither should you. Okay? You grew up. You wrote a book. You were the one who convinced me to go back to Yale. I don't think—"

"Wait, back up. You went back to Yale because of me? I thought…I don't know…"

Rory nodded shyly. "You blew me away that night when you told me everything about Truncheon and your book…I was the one standing still while you were on this fantastic path forward. It made me realize that standing still wasn't what I wanted. I owe that to you."

The gentle hand situated on her back moved fractionally lower. "It was payback. I had to sit through a lot of Rory Gilmore pep talks back in the day."

"Well apparently they weren't wasted." Her eyes roved keenly over his frame.

Jess was not used to this self-assured version of Rory who wasn't afraid to communicate precisely what she wanted. He found his heart rate tripling in force as he tried to remember that she was under the influence of something a little more potent than her archetypal inhibitions. But he still couldn't halt his amplified retort. "Like what you see?"

A faint blush dusted her cheekbones. "I always have. That hasn't changed."

He swore he was going to explode. She was brazenly flirting. This was uncharted terrain and he was flailing for solid ground. "Rory…"

She stepped closer, their bodies brushing. "The song is over. We're not even dancing anymore."

"Huh."

Her hands grazed his shoulders. "So we're back to that. You know, for an author, your vocabulary is really lacking…"

"Rory…" Jess swallowed thickly, his brain mushing on overdrive.

"You already said that," she whispered, her breath hot on his cheek. And then her lips skimmed his, conjuring an absurdly compelling feeling that he wanted to permanently capture and hold prisoner for all of time. Her touch was so unlike anything else, anyone else—

_London._

"Rory, no, I can't," he puffed out, taking a monumental step backward. "I—I…I'm sorry."

She despondently watched his long strides through the brittle grass and onto the stony sidewalk. He took off into the cooling evening without another glance in her direction.

* * *

_**I love reviews like Lorelai loves coffee so hit me with em ;)**_


	3. Scraping The Sky

_**a/n: I promise that these updates will get faster! Life has been unreal..  
**_  
**_Just a warning, the document had some weird spacing issues-I wrote some of this chapter on my phone, some on my laptop, and some on my work computer (don't tell)-so it was a little bit of a mess. Hopefully I caught them all!_**

Please let me know what you think! I don't own the rights to anything but London and Connor, and I don't really want them anyway.

* * *

Jess strode through the revolving glass door of Wells Fargo, cussing out all of corporate America. Truncheon's New York branch—still in the preliminary stages—was quickly folding under the obscene demands of Manhattan's ridiculous zoning ordinances. Their hole-in-the-wall property was outdated by what seemed to be light-years, completely divergent from all the red tape of permits and codes. As he sauntered away from the third bank to reject his loan application in as many hours, he began to wonder if this was an impossible project. He scrubbed a lackadaisical hand across his weary eyes, desperate for a cigarette. Not that he would smoke it...just to look at it, smell it, maybe worship the idea of it. Actually any vice would be appropriate right about now.

And apparently the universe was listening to him. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Rory Gilmore, a portrait of timeless charm, was standing on the opposite corner of the bustling intersection. Jess unabashedly stared at her from his opportune vantage point. He felt that if he even took a moment to blink, she would inconceivably vanish like a tantalizing mirage. And that's when it happened. Her eyes scanned in a panoramic arc, landing on the man in a dark suit who was shamelessly gawking at her. In all of the surrounding commotion—crowds and taxis and tour busses—they still found each other. Even with the distance between them, Jess could see the curve of a smile paint itself on her moldable mouth.  
The lights changed and the crosswalk symbol graciously appeared. He quickened his pace, an unusual lurching in his stomach accompanying each step.

They met halfway across the asphalt walkway, people milling all around them. "You stalking me, Gilmore?"

A light chuckle peppered the vaporous air. "Hardly. Even if I was, I would be doing a miserable job of it."

His head sloped sideways. "And how is that?"

Jess sensed a transient hesitation in her posture, but she shook it off with a nearly physical steadfastness. "Because I would have never been on the lookout for a sophisticated business man wearing a custom suit. Is that thing Italian?!"

He laughed at her stunned tone. "It is _not _custom and it is _not _Italian. And this might be the fourth time I've ever worn it."

"So this must be a special occasion then. Your hair is even slicked back. Hmm, what could it be?" Her eyes lit up with mock jubilation. "Are you the new Regis Philbin?"

"Yeah, since I have the perfect personality to host a talk show." Disdain dripped off of each word as a winning smile captured Rory's demure facial features.

A gust of warm city air stirred her bangs as her lips parted with a teasing retort on his naturally cheerful disposition. The aggravated blare of a cab's horn effectively choked her words as she leapt forward in a furious panic, bumping into Jess with a clumsy oomph. He couldn't withhold his snort of amusement at her spooked response. With a hand on her elbow, he steered a red-faced Rory back to the congested street corner that he had recently vacated. "Still a little uneasy in the _Big Apple_, huh? You are so an out of towner."

His jeering emphasis was not lost on her. She furrowed her brow at his dig, pulling her arm out of his hold as they paused on the swarming sidewalk. "I'll have you know, Mr. New York Native, that I can hold my own here. Just because I don't welcome the idea of becoming a hood ornament does not mean I'm the same teenage girl who balked at the idea of riding the subway."

A half-smirk inched its way across his crooked mouth. He relished the timeworn image of rustling blue plaid and the long-forgotten pattering sound of saddle shoes. All of his thinly constructed means of self-denial had come crashing down as she had unexpectedly whisked into Washington Square Park wearing her uniform—he was irrevocably smitten with an innocent small-town girl who went to private school and had her heart set on Harvard. At the time, that realization had been crippling. It was the makings of an appallingly trite John Mellencamp song. But as she had rambled on with animation about her notorious withering stare, he knew he was conclusively ruined. Rory Gilmore had knocked him right off his insubordinate feet.

And she still did. Jess worked to neutralize his expression, not wanting to tip her off to his fond dose of nostalgia. "You live in the city, right?"

She nodded, her thumb jerking imprecisely over her shoulder. "I have an itty bitty studio apartment in the Village. For all the more time I spend there, it works."

"And the rest of the time you are off globetrotting. Just like you planned."

"Just like I planned." Yet her voice seemed to sag and her smile was dimmer than before.

He shifted uncomfortably, weighing the pros and cons of prying into the unspoken implication of her deflated words.

But she made the decision for him. Rory repositioned the satchel on her arm and took a step backward. "Well, I'll be late if I don't keep moving. It was nice running into you, Jess."

She was already spinning away on her heels when he urgently called after her. "Rory, wait!"

His deep vibrato successfully ceased her movements. She glanced back at him, her normally clear blue orbs cloudier than normal. Jess struggled for a coherent sentence as her form drifted in what felt like suspended motion. Sheer restlessness had triggered his frantic move to stop her, an uncultivated surge of anxiety in his gut. It was completely illogical. But somehow his brain recuperated with the one proposal that was sure to satiate the woman in front of him—"Can I buy you a cup of coffee before you go?"

Her hesitation was tangible.

"There's this local place right around the corner." He jerked his head in the direction of the shop. "They make an unbelievable espresso. Come on, my treat."

Jess could see the warring deliberation in her gaze. She glanced at her wristwatch.

"They have over a hundred combinations of specialty roasts, flavor shots, and syrups..."

A glint of childlike fascination replaced her former worried contemplation. "Over a hundred?"

Victory. "Yep. And I haven't even mentioned the muffins yet."

"Muffins! I'm in. But only if you tell me why you're wearing a custom Italian suit."

A dry chuckle escaped him as he started off in the direction of their destination. She quickly fell into step next to him. "I can't tell you why I'm wearing a custom Italian suit because I am not wearing a custom Italian suit."

"You've joined the mob, haven't you? That explains the _Gangs of New York_ suit and all the evasiveness."

He aimed a sidelong look of facetious annoyance at her. "Wow, Rory, those investigative skills are truly topnotch. You are definitely in the right line of work, ma'am."

Without missing a beat, she snatched at the line he threw at her and ran with it. "Speaking of our respective lines of work, would you like to tell me about yours? Last I knew you were still with Truncheon. But Truncheon is in Philly and apparently you are not. Plus I didn't know such formal attire was an employee requirement. How do you account for that, Mr. Mariano?"

He shook his head at her dogged persistence. "If you must know, Miss Gilmore, Truncheon is expanding. I'm heading up what will hopefully be the New York division…if the powers that be allow it, that is. But that's strictly off the record information, so I best not read about it in tomorrow's headlines."

A radiant grin stretched across her face. She dropped her bantering manner and nudged his arm. "Jess! You're doing that well? You're opening another location? And it's here! That's amazing!"

"Look, before you throw me a housewarming party, do you need to be reminded of the _hopefully_ part? It's not official, especially with the uphill battle we've been facing."

A creasing frown pinched her countenance as Jess slowed his pace. "What kind of uphill battle?"

He calmly reached past her to open the shop's door. The wafting aroma of fresh coffee shrouded the pair as they entered the miniscule shop. "We've encountered some financial hiccups. Acquiring a space we could afford was easy, but apparently the property is about a million miles away from being up to code. So I put on this idiotic suit—which I bought at some Goodwill wannabe, I'll have you know—to make some futile bank visits. Seems Truncheon is not exactly a lucrative investment."

Rory's taste buds were screaming for a taste of all that her nose could sniff out, but her focus wasn't on the enormous chalkboard menu that stretched from one end of the counter to the other. Her thoughts were preoccupied with the disgruntled lilt in Jess' voice. A churning aversion to a very concrete solution nagged at her. But it was for Jess…

"I might be able to help."

Her words were so soft in the chaotic drone of machinery that he doubted the accuracy of his ears. "Did you win the lotto or something?"

She didn't crack a smile. "No…but I could call in a favor for you."

Jess narrowed his almond eyes. "Okay, Al Pacino. And _you_ accused _me_ of being in the mob? I—" But then her intended course of action struck him. "Rory…you don't need to do that. I can figure this out, okay? You don't need to drag him into it. I would never ask you to do that."

"You didn't ask me for anything. I volunteered." He could see the firm resolve in her eyes, recognized it in her definitive stance. "Jess, all I'm saying is that I'll give Connor a call and see what he says. It might not work out, but the least I can do is try. Now shut up so I can concentrate on ordering. "

He fidgeted at the idea of her calling that slick tool for anything, let alone a favor on his behalf. Especially when he didn't even know if they had officially called it quits. Things still seemed unsettled on New Year's Eve, and he hadn't exactly felt the need to broach the topic on the occasion of their last rendezvous. He had been a little too distracted by her intoxicated flirtation…

"Not that I have a right to ask, but…are you still seeing Connor? Just curious."

She pivoted to look at him properly, her sapphire eyes raptly locked on his. "No. That fizzled out months ago. Permanently. But he sort of owes me."

Talk about a loaded answer. Before Jess could formulate another question, the barista motioned them forward to take their order. Rory unloaded a mouthful of caramel half something with a shot of French crème a la whatever. Way too complicated for him. He went with a much simpler choice, then retrieved his wallet and paid for their overpriced beverages. But her substantial elation at the first swallow of what she deemed to be "heaven in a cup" was more than worth it. He held the door for her as they strode back into the gushing sunlight of late spring. A contented silence wedged itself between them as they sipped on their drinks, retracing their steps toward the intersection of their serendipitous meeting.

"Well, I'm this way." Rory bobbed her head to the left.

"Huh. And I'm this way," he countered with a gesture in the opposite direction.

"Is there a way I can reach you? So I can call after I talk to Connor?"

Jess fumbled in his jacket pocket. "Sure, here's my card."

Her spirited smirk was incorrigible. "Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd hear out of you."

"Hey, Gilmore, I'm on the up and up these days."

His words were thrown out lightly, but a bewildering disenchanted look adorned her pale face. "I know." A burdened pause followed her quiet words. He waited, unsure of what was flickering behind those cryptic eyes of hers. "I've got to get to the office…I have to debrief with the editor about Israel."

"Which one is yours?" He couldn't explain it, but he felt senselessly obligated to delay her departure an instant longer.

She indulged him, pointing her index finger high into the stratosphere. "That greenish skyscraper with all the round windows, next to the shorter gray one. We're on the 57th floor."

He whistled with immersed fascination. "Not too shabby."

Her gaze returned to his. "Thanks for the coffee, Jess."

"No biggie. I'm glad you could actually enjoy this cup. I doubt you can even remember the last one." He waggled his eyebrows at her, alluding to his previous amusement at her drunken expense.

Rory groaned, covering her face with her free hand. "Oh, I remember. At least I remember some warped version of it. Please forgive all of my indecent, and possibly offensive, misdemeanors."

"You know I'm not easily offended." He waved nonchalantly as if he was wiping the slate clean.

Her eyes darkened. "But…I really am sorry, Jess. I was completely disrespectful to both you and your relationship—"

"Rory—"

"No, please let me finish. My brain might be a little fuzzy on the details, but I know that I crossed the line. You aren't a cheater, I know that—you always did your best to make sure it was okay, to make things right before anything happened between us…even when I wasn't as cautious as you were."

"Rory, it's—"

She held up a hand to stop him, her neurotic speech blending together. "It won't happen again, I promise. I'll give you a call about the loan, okay?"

"But I—"

His muffled protest went unheard; she was already gone, a singular silhouette dissolving into a mass of color and noise. The imperative confession died needlessly on his arid lips.


	4. Turn of the Pew

**_a/n: I struggled with this one for some reason, but I went on tumblr and looked at adorable Jess and Rory posts, which means I got my LIT act together. Tell me what you think! What will happen next? What do you want more of?_**

* * *

"You want to tell me what's going on?"

Rory tensed, noticeably caught unaware. "What?"

Lorelai squinted at her daughter. "Seriously, sweets, where are you at today?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm fine." Lying in a church. Mrs. Kim would have a conniption if she knew. Rory felt a quiver of paranoia run down her spine as she recalled the thousands of stern lectures she had been forced to endure from Lane's mom. If she weren't already in enough trouble, she was now inviting a bolt of contemptuous lightning from above.

"Are you sure, Rory?" Her mom rubbed a reassuring hand across her back. "Because the bride-to-be is never too busy for her favorite daughter."

"I bet you tell that to all of your daughters."

"Yes, but I only mean it when I say it to you, my eldest and most precious offspring," Lorelai returned with a grin. "I did choose you as my maid of honor, didn't I?"

"Yes. And as your maid of honor, I must say that it is time to get the festivities going. What is the holdup anyway? It's not like Luke to be tardy." She lobbed her wrist upward, invading her mother's direct line of vision in a hyperactive display of stringency. "We're almost 15 minutes behind schedule."

"Gosh, you're like that insane rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Calm yourself. Luke is en route. He's picking Jess up from the train station and I guess there was a delay, but they should be here any second."

"Typical," Rory mumbled as she squirmed against the wooden pew.

Lorelai perked up. "What was that?"

"Nothing important," she returned dismissively. "I think I'm getting splinters from this thing."

"Oh my word, this is a Jess thing!" Her mom's perfectly arched eyebrows hit the ceiling at her supposed revelation.

Rory crossed her arms indignantly. "I resent that. There is no Jess thing. I just prefer punctuality."

"Yeah, uh huh, sure babe. Keep with that story."

"Mom!" She hunched forward, her voice flustered. "You don't believe me?"

"Hey, I've heard the word on the street. Sounds like you two put on quite the scandalous scene at my engagement party." Lorelai paused, noting the pink hue creeping up her daughter's neck. "Which must be true judging by that cute little ruffled feathers look you've got going on?"

Rory blew out a puff of exasperated breath and rolled her eyes. "I'm sure whatever you heard was beyond embellished."

"Wait, you mean you didn't dance a steamy tango that would make Swayze blush, then hop on a Greyhound to Atlantic City and elope to the tune of Copa Cabana in a Trump casino?"

"Unbelievable! Don't people ha—"

"Rory, I'm kidding! No one told me any of that! And I know my daughter would never walk down the aisle to Barry, even if under the influence." Lorelai leaned in closer, her face morphing into a much more sincere expression. "But, honey, even if you did have a potential Jess thing…that wouldn't be so bad. You know that, right?"

"Are you on crack?" Rory's eyes bulged in astonishment. "This is from the woman who, correct me if I am misrepresenting you here, vowed to murder Jess in cold blood—on more than one occasion!"

The elder Gilmore shrugged. "People change. He's come to visit Luke a handful of times in the last year or so, even showed up around the holidays. And while we're hardly pen pals or fishing buddies…I guess you could say we have a truce of sorts. Plus his blueberry waffles are truly out of this world."

"You've eaten his waffles?!" Her pitch nearly shattered the stained glass windows.

"Only after making a few poison control hotline quips. But, hun, you know that whatever happens—or doesn't happen—I'm with you, okay? No matter what. Solidarity sister!" She wrapped a bolstering arm around Rory's shoulder, pulling her in for a slanted hug.

Before she could say another word, the sanctuary's back door finally swung open. Lorelai hopped up, threw an insolent wink back at her daughter, and dashed off to greet her groom. Apprehensive at the suddenly dwindling proximity between her and the famed waffle expert, Rory made a hasty move to join the women listening to Sookie's longwinded rundown of the evening's menu. But her two-timing eyes kept returning to the lean, muscled figure standing alone in the shadows of the back row.

Even if these symptoms—the suffocating tightness in her chest and the desert dryness of her mouth, along with an irritable insistence for accurate timekeeping—could be repulsively indicative of a Jess thing, there were other probable causes. She had only recently returned from a vile stint in Egypt, barely skating back into the states in time for her mother's bachelorette party. A vicious bout of jetlag had latched on longer than usual and her stomach had been perpetually unsettled from some curious strain of something she couldn't pronounce. With torrents of rising political tension and an endless stream of erratic combatant outbreaks, her trip had been exhausting in more ways than one.

"Did you hear me, Rory?"

Oops. She was doing it again. "I'm sorry, Sookie. What did you say?"

"That we're up, lamb chop! Time to get our bridesmaid on!" She then sashayed up the aisle, humming her jingle—"get your bridesmaid on, get it on, get your bridesmaid on."

If only getting "her bridesmaid on" didn't consequently mean mandatory contact with _him._ Not that he had done a single thing wrong. For possibly the first time in their sordidly extensive history of blundering calamities and spiteful quarrels, Rory felt solely accountable for the residual awkwardness that would be sure to flare up at some point during the wedding weekend. Their midnight kiss at the Dragonfly's New Years party had been marginally pardonable, if only because holiday ritual called for such an act. Perhaps ritual did not necessarily make allowances for an indubitable sequel kiss that included a bit more…_interaction_…but hey, it was New Year's Eve. Her conscience could make no excuse, however, for her brash transgressions on the dance floor at her mother's engagement party. And of course Jess couldn't have the decency to let the recitation of that minor catastrophe go unheard. No, he had just had to dredge that one back up in the middle of the Manhattan. Her bungled apology had been so excruciatingly painful that it made her cringe. God, why was she cursed with that mindless rambling habit? And top that off with her propensity for a brisk panicky run after said pesky ramble, and you really had a winning combo.

Shaking off her gloomy cloud of self-loathing, Rory fell in line behind Sookie and made her way up the sloped walkway. This was about Mom and Luke, two people who had earned a much anticipated happy ending. She could ignore Jess for one short weekend, right?

* * *

The blunt edges of an accustomed frustration were hastily reaching an unendurable crescendo. Jess felt a dull throbbing kindling at his temples. He thought he had done the right thing, made a move that had been more than vindicated…but she seemed bent on proving him unequivocally wrong. Rory Gilmore was yet again serving a riotously mixed palette of conflicting signals, an indecipherable code that set the bar higher for every other hard-to-read woman on the planet. Most guys would just admit defeat and back off in an attempt to salvage the smallest fraction of dignity. Too bad he wasn't most guys.

The minister chose that moment to unintentionally align with Jess' plan. "And once I give you the cue, you'll turn to your awaiting audience and march up the aisle as man and wife. Go ahead and we'll work on bridal party exits."

Luke offered his arm to Lorelai, who after a mock curtsy, accepted with glee. They followed the specified instructions and paraded toward the back of the church with their heads ducked together in a conspiring exchange. His aggravation temporarily dissipated at the sight—not that he was one for a bunch of goofy emotions, but he had to admit that he was glad to see his uncle so happy. A lot had changed since he had bitterly referred to Luke as a golden retriever waiting to be noticed. Given their present locale, the man had clearly done something right.

"Now we'll have Rory and Jess—" he swore the reverend had to insert a false brightness at the name of the former town hooligan—"meet in the center where the bride and groom had been standing…go on now."

Rory stubbornly kept her head down as she took a few measured steps forward. Jess, in his distinct casual strut, did the same. "Hello, Rory."

"Jess." Her eyes bounced around the room in a distinguishable show of discomfort.

"Okay let's have the best man present his arm to the maid of honor, then escort her up the aisle."

He did as told, his right arm extending in her direction. "I promise I won't bite, darling."

That got her attention. Those cobalt orbs of hers fastened to his with a disarming forcefulness. "Don't call me that," she muttered faintly. Her freckled arm slipped reticently into position, her small hand barely gracing the sleeve of his button-down shirt. He glanced back at the minister, who gestured them forward with a patronizing leer.

"So I've been wanting to say thank you."

She blinked, quickening their pace. "For what?"

"Slow down! Everyone wants a good look as you pass them," the reverend bellowed from his spot at the altar.

"Truncheon's loan went through. Construction starts when I get back to the city." He kept his voice impersonal, choosing to exclude the part of the story where he had been disappointed that she hadn't been the one to call him. She had seemingly handed the whole thing off to Connor, who had put one of his underlings on the job. Either way, he did owe her his gratitude.

"Good. That's good." Rory nodded, but her stiff posture and glazed expression reminded him of a zombie in one of those cheesy apocalypse movies.

Their momentum halted as they reached their destination. Her neck twisted in a pathetically obvious effort to flag down her mother's attention. Lorelai, on the other hand, abruptly swiveled away and whispered something to Luke that made his eyes widen.

Deciding to utilize this unusual scenario—he had never before witnessed such a blatant drop in communication between the tightknit mother and daughter duo—Jess pulled Rory's arm closer to his side. Her shoulder jostled his and she let out an irked breath. "Do you mind?"

"Yeah, Rory, actually I do." He fought to regulate his volume, desperately wishing to keep this conversation between the two of them. "Wanna tell me why I'm getting the freeze treatment here?"

She gave him a curt shrug. "Probably  
because Reverend Skinner has the air conditioning cranked way too high."

A murky scowl etched itself into his facial features. Jess chose to exploit their wedding-friendly stance and swung his arm forcibly, propelling a very off-center Rory in a sweeping semicircle toward him. His free hand grasped her other arm, stabilizing her as she came to a screeching stop in rather close proximity to his body. "Jess! What the h—"

"That sentiment is mutual. I didn't do anything wrong this time, Rory, and you know that. We were fine the last time I saw you, minus the spastic farewell that you so courteously left me with on the sidewalk. Then I show up today and it's like the Cold War broke out and you forgot to send me my invitation. You won't look at me, you're barely speaking to me, and the worst part is you're playing stupid about the whole frickin thing."

Her doe-eyed regard made him rethink his harshness …until she opened her mouth. "I—I—I'm sorry, Jess. I'm just kind of out of it, that's all."

"That's the best you can do?"

"What if it is?!" That deep-rooted delicate fire regenerated in the depths of her eyes. It's a trait he had always loved about her, the way she could go from sweetly naïve to compulsively dynamic in just seconds. That divergent contrast always stirred an unhinged attraction in him, and he often found himself purposefully pushing the right buttons to spur her on.

"Sorry, don't buy it." He shook his head in hotheaded astonishment. "Wow, I really am such an idiot. I thought that you—that we wanted the same—"

"Alright, let's run it one more time from the start, folks!"

Jess glanced over his shoulder, noticing that the rest of the participants were already falling back into their original places. "Forget it. Clearly I misread the situation. Forgive me for foolishly assuming that we were _finally _on the same page."

His hand released her as his other arm slipped out of its chivalrous station. He descended the aisle in a huff, knowing that surviving this weekend would require every last shred of his sparsely preserved control.

* * *

Okay, so ignoring him was not really the best plan of action. That whole arm in arm thing was sort of inevitable. Rory sighed and shuffled into the foyer. As much as she needed to simply wash her hands of their muddled altercation, her brain seemed stuck on a sharp dash of something she hadn't cognitively processed. What had Jess meant with that same page comment? And before that, when he had been interrupted…

Her mother nudged her from behind. "You're turn, kid. The faster we do this, the faster we eat!"

Rory trudged back down the aisle, her eyes steadily trained on Jess. He unwaveringly met her scrutiny in a silent challenge. She watched him peevishly thrust his shirtsleeves toward his elbows, a past habit she immediately identified as an outlet for unutterable unease. A widespread chill scraped its way through her in a total disregard for the cardigan she wore over her floral sundress. Rory shifted her gaze to Luke who was examining her with a quizzical look. She threw a tender smile at him as she passed, taking her appointed mark as she internally cursed herself for continuously lacking subtlety. If Luke Danes knew something was up, then the whole church, all of Stars Hollow, and half of Connecticut probably knew it too.

She zoned out as her mother fell into place with the rest of the wedding party. Her mind returned to Jess' dangling diatribe, going over it again and again. Rory knew he had been on the brink of saying so much more, if only he hadn't been cutoff.

"Alright, to have and to hold, blah blah blah, kiss the bride, scoot up that aisle."

That was her cue. Rory crept to the middle of the altar and took the strong arm that awaited her. His cologne was making her deliciously lightheaded and an appealing warmth radiated off of him. It struck her suddenly; she _had _to know what was going on in that impenetrable head of his. If she wanted to enjoy an ounce of her mother's special day, she couldn't be battling with this perpetual loop of unanswered questions.

"Jess?"

His amber eyes flicked over to her. Apparently that was all the more acknowledgement she deserved.

Her palms felt slick as she contemplated her words. "Maybe…maybe you didn't misread the situation. What page did you think we were on?"

Jess stopped midstride with such suddenness that Rory almost stumbled forward. She craned her neck to whisper close to his ear: "We're not quite to end of the aisle yet."

He grunted in response and she could feel the muscles beneath her hand twitch frantically. They began walking again, but his steps were slower. "Rory…don't do this unless you're…sure."

That would have been a good warning a million miles ago. Like when he first got off the bus to Stars Hollow at the age of seventeen. It was too late now. "I'm sure."

And here they were, standing in between rows of vacant church pews, both as unsure as ever but both equally incapable of backing down. He let go of her arm. She remained stock-still, not shying away in spite of their nearness. "Look, it's only a big deal if you want it to be, okay?"

Rory nodded, hanging willfully on each rhythmic word that escaped his mouth.

"I…I broke up with London after we kissed at the engagement party."

She swallowed heavily. "Why? Because…because you…"

Jess studied her with steep concentration, the agonizing gap extending for what felt like a few lifetimes. His lips quirked sideways as he exhaled. "Because she wasn't you."

* * *

_**dun dun dun.**_

Reviews make my world go round ;)


	5. Pivot

_**a/n I had to break this one up into two parts because my storytelling ran away with itself...what can ya do? **_

* * *

"Because she wasn't you." The words departed with a physical potency, leaving him with a weak and winded sting in his lungs. Some may label it vulnerability; he would probably identify it as hell on earth.

Those vast baby blues were drinking in every last smidgen of his discomposure. Rory's lips were tentatively pursed and her brow creased with a deluge of unsolved passion. Her mouth opened warily, promptly closed, then reopened with renewed determination. "So in New York…when I went on and on about wanting to respect your relationship…and you kept trying to interrupt me…?"

Jess inhaled with difficulty. "I was trying to tell you. You made it sort of impossible."

She ducked her head as her normally untarnished ivory complexion became blotchy. She slurred a few haphazard syllables under her breath that he couldn't quite discern, with the exception of one abysmal expletive that he _never_ thought he'd hear out of Rory Gilmore. Part of him wanted to be amused at her dirty mouth, but the other part of him—the part that was dominating ninety-nine percent of his very being—was too nervous at the ambivalent implication of that choice word to find it even remotely funny.

His characteristic addiction to self preservation flared from within. "I said it didn't have to be a big deal, so don't worry about it."

He maneuvered around her and greedily drew in a few fortifying breaths.

"Jess, wait."

Her hand perched precariously on his upper arm. He turned back, trapped in the furtive web of her saccharine scent, her sapphire eyes, her effortless beauty. Jess had the distinctive feeling that this would be one of those decisive moments that he would either be reveling in for days or trying to forget for years—an unpredicted _he's right, everything he said, all those things about you and me_ or a much worse _no,no,no_. He mentally steeled himself for what could very well be a deafening blow.

"I…" her chin wobbled as her eyes slipped down the length of his face. "It is a big deal. I want it to be a big deal."

He inched closer, his head skewed at an angle. "Huh. Okay."

A wordless give-and-take streamed between their unblinking eyes. She made no attempt to clarify or reclaim her admission, but instead stood in an immovable pose of statuesque elegance. Thousands of savage impulses buzzed through him, all at odds with the strange heaviness in his limbs.

"Hey, do you two plan on doing that staring contest thing all night, or do you wanna eat? Are you coming?"

A lopsided smirk donned his face. "Sure thing, Uncle Luke."

His sarcasm-drenched reply earned a light giggle from the woman next to him. Luke rolled his eyes and returned to Lorelai's side, wrapping an arm around her shoulder as they led the way to the rehearsal dinner. With that dangerous smirk still intact, Jess glanced back at Rory. "Shall we?"

* * *

Sometimes hours felt like days that felt like years. Patience was one of the many virtues he had never felt the need to master. It didn't help that being in this diner was like entering a time portal of assorted memories—some significantly better than others.

Luke unexpectedly clapped him on the back, a rascally grin stretching across his features. "You remember how to lock up, right?"

Jess harrumphed with a knowing look. "Subtlety has never been your strong suit, huh?"

"Now what's that supposed to mean? It's already late, my fiancée now has her desired caffeine fix, and I would like to go home. So I am asking you if you still know how to lock up. That's all."

But as always, Luke was easier to read than a child's picture book. The older man's eyes darted to where Lorelai and Rory sat vigorously chatting, empty coffee mugs situated on the counter before them.

"I can handle it. Something else you want to say, Uncle Luke?"

He scoffed. "It's just _Luke_."

Jess allowed a fragment of a laugh to filter through him. "Yeah, I know. But seriously, just say what you want to say. Maybe a 'don't do anything stupid,' or a nice 'you hurt her and I hurt you' type of demand. What'll it be?"

Luke shook his head, his expression softening with fondness. "I wasn't going to say any of that. Have a good night, Jess."

His eyebrow rose sharply. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"Okay." Jess scratched the back of his head, truly intending to later launch a formal investigation as to when _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ had filmed its Stars Hollow sequel. Luke had never been this laid back when it came to the rocky relationship between his unruly nephew and the beloved Rory Gilmore.

But Luke's usual gruff demeanor speedily reemerged as he called over his shoulder, "And don't be late tomorrow morning or I'll kill you."

Alright, maybe no body snatching at work after all. Jess went to work on the few vacated tables that hadn't yet been cleared, his body humming with unbridled anticipation. The clanking bell above the door sounded off a few minutes later—they were finally alone. Stealing a glimpse upward, his eyes met hers and the entire world blurred. He dropped the rag he had been holding and moseyed leisurely to the counter.

The corners of her provoking mouth twitched with scarcely restrained joy. "So our earlier discussion was kind of hijacked…"

"Huh. That was rude, wasn't it?" Jess propped himself against the bar, nonchalantly leaning into the inconsequential space between her stool and the one that Lorelai had recently evacuated.

"Yes," pleasure evident in the playful lilt of her voice, "how rude for them to have a rehearsal dinner in the middle of our vitally important conversation."

His head pitched slightly forward. "That's what I'm saying. No manners around here. Emily Post would be horrified."

"Absolutely." She spoke dimly as if the word had cost her something great.

Jess felt his breath hitch as he watched her eyes wander pointedly to his lips. "So…anything change for you in the last two hours?"

The barstool creaked ominously as she slid a little closer. "Not that I can recall. You?"

"Hmm. Nope, don't think so." His hand found the smooth skin of her bare knee. A nagging insecurity warred in his conflicted mind. "Rory…I meant what I said back in the church. I don't want…_this_…unless you can say that it is for sure what you want. I—"

His head spun violently and his eyes slammed shut as her lips surged firmly against his. Her arms wound tightly around his neck, anchoring him to her. Jess returned her ardently applied pressure, his mouth moving automatically in a memorized pattern of adoration. Rory broke the kiss too soon but kept their foreheads connected.

"I said I'm sure," she whispered. "Do you believe me now?"

Speaking seemed unmanageable. He rejoined their lips as an alternative, knowing that was better than any verbal response he could hazily muster. A raging blaze coursed through him as she eagerly opened her mouth to his. His hand glided higher up her thigh, inducing a deep throaty moan that encouraged his route.

And then the jangling bell sounded again. Rory wrenched back with a gasp, her face quickly imitating the ketchup bottle beside her. Jess stifled his urge to slaughter the interloping customer. Without even bothering to look, he tersely grumbled—"We're closed."

"Yeah, I guess you are."

Both of their heads snapped to the door. There was no mistaking that voice.

* * *

_**Sorry to let you hang on that cliff. Guesses as to who has arrived?**_


	6. Chocolate Sprinkles

_**a/n: picking up right where I left off. You guys made it clear that you DO NOT like cliffhangers so maybe I'll refrain in the future...maybe ;)**_

**_A quick note to a guest reviewer known as "Me" (only because I have no way of messaging you): I laughed SO HARD at your review, only because you and I have similar feelings about pregnancy plot devices. I promise you that no one will come forward with a pregnancy scarein the fic (or probably anything else I write). That type of drama is not really my style and I hate it when one of my favorite stories takes a sudden baby mama twist. Thanks for your review, friend._**

* * *

She felt Jess' hand, which was still unnervingly dusting the skin just above her hemline, become markedly tense. "We're closed."

"Yeah, I guess you are." Her head rotated with such acceleration that she was positive she'd feel the aftereffects of whiplash in the morning. There was no mistaking that voice, the lost promises of love and a car and a leather bracelet and her first time. _Dean._

And just a handful of years ago this situation would have her hurriedly disconnecting from Jess in a painful swell of humiliation and clumsiness. Maybe it was the heat of his hand on her leg or the dizzying rush of that searing kiss, but Rory couldn't bring herself to pull away or make a rummaging excuse. Unfortunately, Jess seemed to feel otherwise. He rigidly retreated from their intertwined hold and her body instantly mourned the loss of contact. Her eyes sprang between her two ex-boyfriends, one towering and seething while the other vainly attempted to mask his growing apprehension. This was less than ideal.

"Dean, hi, it's been a—"

"Cut the crap, Rory." His fists balled up at his sides. "I'm not really in the mood for small talk right now."

Jess snickered. A vein in Dean's forehead bulged obtrusively.

"Tell me you aren't making such a huge mistake, not after the way he—"

"**Stop**." She understood it then, could recite it in her sleep. It wasn't any amount of heat or dizziness that unapologetically bonded her to that stool. It was different, Jess was different. Some protective instinct clawed through her, a restless longing for this chance to be the last one they would ever have to take.

"You don't know anything about this because if you did, you would know that _I'm_ the one who treated _him_ badly the last several times we saw each other … you would know that he's changed, that he's successful, and that he has act together better than I do. So please don't start something that will make me feel like I'm still in high school, because I had a weird affinity for ugly turtlenecks back then and I'd rather not go there again."

Rory felt Jess curiously inspecting her, his eyes roving over her with suspended questions and a hint of fixed approval. He straightened imperceptibly and, with his gaze still fully on her, found his voice. "Like I said, we're closed. Id' say come back tomorrow, but we're closed then too."

She watched Dean mutely slouch backward, his eyes narrowed with disgust. With a hand on the doorknob and another jamming into his pocket, he chided feebly—"You could do so much better, Rory."

The door slammed, the blinds rattling in harmony with her irregular breathing. She felt his fingertips hesitantly trace a pattern on her upturned palm. "I don't really miss the turtleneck look either."

"Jess…"

"I mean it was endearing at the time, especially with that whole private school thing you had going on."

She sighed loudly, the fleeting wisp of oxygen ruffling her bangs. "Jess, I…"

"But I prefer the current wardrobe. And it is a big improvement from when you went through the DAR stage…that look was a little too PTA for my tastes."

Funny how he literally couldn't stop talking when he was mocking her; at even the slightest insinuation of a serious conversation, it was all grunts and monosyllabic comebacks. Her lips opened to say something along those lines, but he was quick to press a stilling index finger to her mouth.

"What the frick was that, Rory? That garbage about me being better off than you? As much as I'm flattered to hear it, that was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard you say. And it's up against some tough competition, like trying to justify Macy Gray's presence in your music library and repeatedly blaspheming Hemmingway. Care to share?"

She pointed accusingly at his continued restraint on her ability to speak. Jess withdrew the offending finger and quirked an awaiting brow. Rory lifted a noncommittal shoulder. "You know I went through a rough patch not so long ago."

Jess frowned. "I'm not sure what we're referring to here…Connor? Because I think I mentioned a fresh breakup on my end too."

Rory pinched the bridge of her nose. The jet lag, her churning stomach, his probing inquiries at her stupid slip…she didn't want to do this. "It's not that."

"Then tell me what it is," he cupped her face, dictating a connection with the copper depths of his eyes. "C'mon Rory, I've been waiting for you to cut that Boy Scout down to size since I first met you. Please don't ruin it for me now."

"I can't believe you're still calling him that."

He pinned her with a glare. "Don't deflect. Out with it, Gilmore."

"I'm tired."

Jess tightened his hold on her, his thumb swiping away the solitary tear that strayed from her black lashes. "Not a good enough excuse."

She chuckled bleakly. "Good, because it's not one."

His eyes darkened. "Meaning?"

"What if…if I'm not cut out for my job?" She worried her bottom lip between pristine rows of white teeth. "I know I always said I wanted to do this but…maybe he was right, maybe I don't have _it_."

"Okay, you need to fill me in here. Who are you talking about? I'll go kick his—"

"No Jess, it isn't about that." Rory disentangled herself from his grip and slithered down off the stool. "I mean…you said it yourself, and I'd be proving you and everyone else right and…"

He grabbed her wrists, effectively subduing her rapid pacing strides. "Connect the dots for me, Rory. I've never been good with guessing games. What did I say that had to do with your job?"

She couldn't suppress the fragile diffidence welling in her turbulent expression. "It was a long time ago…the night that I was supposed to be tutoring you…and we went on that impulsive little field trip that didn't end so well."

Jess nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing severely. "I happen to remember this one. I promised you that you would do it, didn't I?"

"Only after you said it would be too rough for me!"

"And I'm being held to that?!" Rory couldn't offer suitable response so he plunged ahead. "You caught me off guard, okay, I didn't expect you to say anything that…dangerous. But you have to know that I've never doubted your ability to do _anything._ Come on, I'm the high school dropout, right? You? Always destined for greatness."

She cringed. Judging by his wounded look, it wasn't the reaction he had bargained for. "What if I don't want greatness?"

"What if I don't accept that answer?"

"Jess, I just…can't." She was stunned when he suddenly tugged her into his arms, swaddling her against the capable planes of his warm chest. She hadn't even known she was cold until she felt the comforting contrast of his closeness.

His reassuring cadence rumbled from above her head. "Is this because I never got around to driving straight at you while screaming in a foreign language?"

A sincere laugh spilled out of her. "No, I don't think that's the problem. It wouldn't have hurt though."

Jess felt relieved at the brilliant sound of her mirth. He laid several short kisses along the shiny crown of her head, his confusion at her meltdown nearly overshadowed by the welcomed feeling of her small frame wrapped up in his arms. But then a flash of their chance encounter a few months ago resurfaced; she had been upset when they talked that day in New York, her demeanor sporadically wilting without explanation. It had piqued his interest then and, evidently, the issue had yet to be resolved. Shamelessly employing the one tactic he knew to be prosperous, Jess dipped his mouth to her temple. "Anyone who told you that you don't have _it_—whatever that even means—is wrong. Me included."

Rory started to refute his statement, but he cut her off as his lips sought the shell of her ear. "And you know, Rory, I recall that the last time I showed my face in this Ward Cleaver town…" he paused as he bit down gently. "You informed me that I gave you the push you needed to go back to Yale. Is that right?"

Her shaky exhale and miniscule nod satisfied his question. He knew he had her when he found that familiar sensitive spot just below her earlobe. Rory's fingers raked across his back as she melted further into his chest. "So I think I've paid my dues here, cleaned up my act, proven my mettle; pick a clichéd phrase, I've done it. You can trust me with whatever this is. Maybe a sounding board is all you need to figure it out."

Jess drew back and tilted her chin with the pads of his calloused fingers, searching her watery blue eyes for a sign of his coaxing words taking root. Rory looked up at him through thick lashes with a blend of sadness and fascination. "I like new Jess."

His pulse flipped at her husky intonation. "And I think it's obvious that he likes you too. So..?"

"Right, new Jess wants answers." She fretfully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm not…I don't…"

"C'mon, Rory." He massaged her shoulder.

Her whole face puckered. "What happens when you get exactly what you've always wanted but then you realize that it isn't what you thought it would be and giving up feels like failing but sticking with it feels like dying?"

Jess blinked at the swift urgency in her distraught speech. "That's really how you feel?"

"Yes." A tiny sniffle accompanied her passive reply.

"And you honestly think that switching gears and starting over would mean you failed?"

She sniffed again. "Yes. It would mean I couldn't handle it, that I wasn't good enough."

"That's freaking absurd and you are too smart to believe that." He turned her by her slim shoulders and led her back to the counter. "Sit down."

Rory did as she was told, her glossy cerulean eyes trailing his every movement. Jess bent to kiss her cheek, then backtracked to the opposite end of the bar. He might not have the benefit of knowing every aspect of this Rory, this woman who wore lipstick and was surprisingly short on self-confidence, but he'd bet his book collection that she was still the biggest sweet tooth in all of New England. Returning promptly with a prized donut, chocolate iced and drowning in colorful sprinkles, Jess smiled triumphantly as Rory's entire face brightened.

"You're my hero. Seriously, I'm getting you a cape first thing tomorrow." She ferociously bit into the treat with her usual zealousness, earning a smirk from her audience of one.

"I'm sure your mother would appreciate the best man flying into her ceremony."

Rory grinned, a smear of chocolate coating the corner of her lips. "That would be show stopper for sure. And as much as she would adore the unique whimsical element it would add to the big day, I think that would qualify as upstaging the bride and no one upstages Lorelai Gilmore."

"I wouldn't dare." His thumb magnetically extended, dabbing at the smudge of icing. "You're wearing some frosting…huh. Don't think I got it all."

"No?" Her eyes sparkled invitingly.

"Hold still." Jess leaned in, his mouth closing in on hers. "Mmm, almost got it."

She fisted a swatch of his button-down shirt as his tongue swiped at the spot. "Jess…"

The desire in her foggy tone spoke stridently as to what she wanted. He shifted and claimed her fully in a proper kiss. A swirling taste of chocolate and maybe—just _maybe _—love dragged him further into the embrace. This engulfing emotion had captured him when he was numb to all else, compelled him to do ludicrous things; he had been infatuated enough to empty his wallet on a shabby basket, deliver a counterfeit care package, return to the wretched hellhole after a brief stint in the freedom of his city, only to sullenly sit for hours at a dumb dance marathon. Then he had her. But the crushing impact of their decaying relationship had stung him so deeply that it sent him fleeing across the country with a battered heart, only to reappear and put himself through the ringer all over again. His ego took a nose-dive with an unbearable declaration of love and a rash plea to run away. But its best accomplishment, its most powerful endorsement, came later—he scraped his way out of that spiraling self-pity and channeled it all into something useful. The initial attraction, the relationship, the collapse, the searching, the disappointment…it all came together in this unforeseen way that propelled him forward. Years passed and yet here they were, exchanging kisses in the same diner that had already seen an incoherent litany of their ups and downs.

And it struck him that he knew he had his act together, but he was no further ahead if she didn't feel the same way. That engulfing emotion could only take him so high if Rory was headed for another devastating crash.

Jess reluctantly hauled his lips away from hers. She protested, her dissatisfied whimper almost evaporating his steadfastness. "You aren't off the hook yet."

She glowered at him. "When did you become such a chatterbox?"

He shrugged impishly. "It comes and goes."

"Hmm. So you bribed me with a donut and a kiss, meaning I'm supposed to cooperate now?"

"Yep? Is it working?" He idly smoothed her bangs back.

"Yes, it is," she retorted with a snicker. "You could revolutionize the counseling industry with these methods of yours."

"I'll take that under advisement. So I must ask, Miss Gilmore, what would you do if you had to choose all over again?"

"Join the circus." She grinned impetuously at his observable annoyance.

"**Rory**."

"Sorry, way too easy. Umm…maybe editing? I mean I love writing, but I was surprised by how much I liked working as the editor at the Yale Daily News. I guess it's more administrative then what I ever thought I'd be doing though."

He wove his fingers through hers. "Did that bother you at the time? The administrative side of things?"

"No, I liked being a part of the big picture, fitting the pieces together and organizing it all into one cohesive product. I developed a system that really worked too." She paused, shaking her head with a laugh. "That sounds horribly nerdy, doesn't it?"

Jess cocked a disparaging brow. "Yes."

"Jess!"

"I'm kidding, gosh." He pulled her in for a chaste kiss. "It makes perfect sense. You've always been obsessive compulsively alphabetizing random crap and harassing those of us who did not have similar dysfunctions."

"Oh, don't get me started on what a slob you are. How you ever find a single CD is—"

He kissed her again, then murmured against her supple lips—"That was not an invitation to criticize."

"My apologies. Let me make it up to you." Her hands floated lazily across his muscled torso as her mouth merged with his. He couldn't hold back his muffled groan at the thumping sensation of Rory's nails outlining his abdominals. Slanting his head for a more advantageous angle, Jess felt her ragged breath peppering across his skin. He distantly heard the squeak of the barstool as she snuck closer but it did little to prepare him for the unaccustomed feel of her legs locking into place around him. _That _was certainly new.

He broke the kiss, panting and woozy. "Rory…"

She didn't move. Her lips skimmed the stark lines of his jaw. "This is right, Jess. Try and tell me differently."

His hands shuffled on their own accord, slipping to her thighs. "Unless you've become an exhibitionist in recent years, I think it's in our best interest to relocate."

She giggled as he easily hoisted her into his arms, brushing them both past the curtain and into the stairwell.


	7. All Hands On Deck

_**a/n: This chapter went somewhere completely unexpected, but I'm pretty happy with it & I hope you are to! Reviews are the best motivators, so hit me with em :)**_

I always forget to tell you what I don't own, which in this chapter includes: Jess, Rory, Boo Radley, Houdini, any whales...or Mrs. Kim. Go figure.

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A muted grayish light seeped into the room, casting its inarticulate hue across the tall wood paneling and aged taupe paint. The sun still hid somewhere beneath the horizon and even the bass mounted on the wall seemed sluggish. Yet something stirred Jess from his slumbering stupor. He rolled over, his arm seeking the warmth of Rory's curled up form; his skin was inexpressibly disappointed by the impersonal feel of cool sheets.

He had always believed the idea of one's heart sinking to be a sentimental and trite crutch for the frailer members of humanity. But that persistent plummeting in his chest gripped him so ruthlessly that he knew this was no simple crutch—his heart was _sinking. _She was gone.

A quick squint at the watch on his wrist, miraculously intact despite last night's feverish goings-on, informed him of the miserably early hour. It was minutes before six, meaning she had probably left him in the middle of the night. Jess couldn't recall much from those blissful moments spent hovering between wakefulness and sleep, all he knew was that Rory had been snuggled tightly to his side as the traces of unconsciousness had edged in. The words "too good to be true" weighed heavily upon every cell in his body. His own words from a few years ago whipped through his brain, haunting him with their incessantly vague accuracy: _it is what it is...you and me._

The illustrious quicksand of "it is what it is" had claimed his meager mortality once more. It was really imprudent of him to expect anything less. Too bad he would be forced to walk her up the aisle and endure a whole dismal reception at the head table with her at his side. Maybe Luke wouldn't notice if he just took a smoke break that lasted for three hours. Not that he ever had cigarettes in his possession anymore, but maybe he could find a pack stashed somewhere in the forgotten back nooks and crannies of that antique cherry desk. Lord knows he had quite the collection stockpiled back in the day.

Jess scoured his bleary eyes, knowing that there was no chance of falling back asleep now. It was so freaking metaphorical that it made him nauseous—he had irrevocably traded the dreamlike happiness of night for the startling starkness of morning.

A remote echo intruded upon his caustic musings. He dismissed it as some sideshow freak of a townsperson having an aneurism downstairs…but then it occurred to him that not only was it obscenely early for that, but the diner was closed anyway. After a momentary consideration, Jess flopped back onto the heap of pillows, choosing pessimistic ignorance over dutiful investigation. But then the scrape of ceramic reverberated through the thin floor and his inquisitiveness amplified as a new prospect scribbled through his tired brain. He dragged his reluctant body off of the mattress and lethargically slipped into a pair of old sweatpants as he ambled through the apartment and down the narrow steps.

Sure enough, there she was. A wafting fragrance of richly brewed coffee washed over him as he took in the slim brunette hunched over a paperback and clasping an oversized mug.

"You're here." It crackled out of him in a rusty croaking manner.

A wave of cobalt casually took him in from her place at the corner table. "Yep."

He took a half step in her direction. "You're here and you're wearing my shirt."

"Very observant," she nodded with an assuring smile.

His head fell a little to the left as his gaze appreciatively meandered over the length of her body. "Those are not my pants though. If those even qualify as pants."

Rory flushed at his rasping tone. "They're called leggings and I found them in what was quite obviously a Lorelai drawer. There were three pairs of Hello Kitty socks."

"So you found some of your mom's clothes but you're still wearing my shirt. Huh." He sauntered to her table in slow and deliberate strides.

"Didn't you know? I'm a sucker for lewd Metallica t-shirts." She lowered her head marginally as the pinkish hue spread to her neck. "Plus it smells like you."

Jess grinned widely, her flustered confession setting fire to his already heightened desire. He plopped down into the chair next to her. "You like that, do ya?"

She raised the mug to her cheerful lips in a blatant plot to avoid his prying inquiry. His hand locked on her wrist, blocking her valiant attempt. Rory opened her mouth in complaint, but his lips claimed hers before she could utter a sound. The kiss lingered for several soft seconds at a delectably unhurried pace. His eyes remained closed when she pulled back slowly, and a humming sound resonated from his throat as her fingertips perused the muscles of his bare back.

"You like that, do ya?"

He heard the satisfied smile in her melodic tone. Cracking his amber eyes open and sending his best sneer her direction, he muttered, "You Gilmore's think a lot of yourselves."

Her eyes twinkled in the dim predawn light. "So I've heard. From you."

"What can I say? When I'm right, I'm right. Whatcha reading?"

"I'm assuming it's yours. Unless Luke is leaving notes in the margins of books he's never actually read." She tilted the cover for him to see the iconic white tale in a sea of thrashing waves. _Moby Dick_.

"Not likely, although hunting an overgrown fish would be the right storyline to hook him…pun not intended." His mouth quirked at his inadvertent play on words.

Rory chuckled as she sipped her coffee. "You should have owned it."

"Yeah, but I'm too way cool for that," he said with simulated self-deprecation. "So I wouldn't have pegged you as a Melville girl."

"Well selection was scarce up there. Plus I think the transparent and overpowering use of symbolism and foreshadowing offers some convenient context to our current situation, don't you? "

Jess shook his head and palmed his brow with a groan. "Please don't say I'm Captain Ahab."

She shook her head with equaled vigor. "Oh, trust me, I won't. That makes me a whale. No self-respecting girl wants that comparison."

"But what are you saying? That the years we've spent ominously circling each other will eventually end in a catastrophic life-ending shipwreck? I'm not loving that diagnosis, Rory."

Her hand intertwined with his. "No, that's not what I'm saying. Ahab was fatally fixated on the past and Moby just wanted to be free to wreak his havoc on the rest of the sea. Maybe I should have clarified before—I think that we can gain some convenient **contrasting** context to our current situation. You don't want to harpoon me, do you?"

He snorted incredulously. "No, not particularly."

"Good. And not only do I have no desire to take off another one of your limbs, but I also regret doing that the first time around. We'll be just fine." She shrugged and gulped down a mouthful of caffeine.

Jess watched her in complete disbelief. "How is your brain capable of all that subtext at this godforsaken hour?"

"The charming backlash of jetlag." She picked at the peeling tabletop with her free hand. "My internal clock has been permanently derailed. It's an occupational hazard."

He squeezed her fingers sympathetically. "Hmm. That should qualify you for some workman's comp."

She rewarded him with a full peel of laughter. "Oh my gosh, I'm filing a report as soon as I'm back in New York. Steven's head will blow up."

"Your editor?" Sometimes it unnerved him, how little he truly knew of her day to day life.

Her thumb sketched a phantom line across his knuckles. "Yeah, he's good at what he does, but a healthy dose of fresh air would do him some good. He's like the office Boo Radley…I'm pretty sure his cubicle could double as a bunker."

If this was really Rory Gilmore in front of him—and the cavernous _Moby Dick_ analysis and polished _To Kill A Mockingbird_ reference, all in a matter of minutes, definitely indicated that it was—then how could she realistically be sitting here so calmly? It was as if nothing earthshattering or redefining had occurred in the last twenty-four hours. "Aren't you even a little bit freaked out about this? About last night?"

She peered at him in confusion. "Nice segue, Jess."

He sensed the excessive intensity in his rushed words, but they were gruesomely flying out of him without his consent. "Can you blame me? We're hovering all around it and—"

"Hold up. I mentioned my editor's cubicle and that translates as hovering around the topic of sex?" He tried to extract his hand from hers, but she her fingers clamped down reflexively. Rory leaned forward, her forehead almost touching his. "Do you want me to be freaked out?"

Her whispered words were like silk. He could practically taste the coffee on her tongue. "No. But I find it hard to believe that you aren't. I've never known you to be so _c'est la vie_ about something this..."

"Something this gigantic? This decisive? This irreversible?" Her eyes darted back and forth as she spoke. "This _perfect_? What will it take to convince you that I'm not going to regret this? I thought you would have gotten the message by the time we hit round three last night."

"Round three was pretty good, wasn't it?" As much as he tried to play the words off as a flippant agreement, Jess couldn't shed the gravity of his expression.

Rory finally released his hand and nervously gathered her long hair back into a meticulous ponytail, only to let it all fall back in a dark curtain around her face. After an elongated delay, she finally cleared her throat and voiced the niggling thought that wouldn't let go. "You thought I was gone, didn't you? This morning…you fully expected me to pull a Houdini and vanish."

"Rory…" He hated the injured quality of each syllable that left her.

"Just be honest." Her face was a solemn mask of impassiveness.

"When I woke up…yes, I figured you had left."

She nodded firmly, but the downward twitch of her lips did not escape his notice. "And…is that what you wanted? For me to leave, for this to just be another isolated incident that we just shove into a corner for the next eight months until we awkwardly have to face each other at Christmas dinner or wherever?"

Jess just stared blankly back at her, uncertain as to what sort of response she was hoping for. That was a loaded question if he had ever heard one, and his policy for such situations was an old fallback—silence. But the strength in her tone had floundered and he watched guardedly as her shoulders began to droop.

"Fine, I guess that's my cue." She swayed to her feet and clutched at the hollow mug. "I'm sorry I wasn't what you expected."

And that horrifically false statement was just farfetched enough to unglue his degenerative tongue. "Don't go, please. Rory, I'm bad at this and you know that."

"No, no, I get it, okay? I'll just…I'll grab my stuff from upstairs and be out—"

"No." He leapt to his feet with such a startling posture of defiance that the table almost flipped over. Rory staggered backward with a spooked look in her doe eyes. "The _last_ thing I want is to add another isolated incident to our extensive list of isolated incidents. I'm still trying to figure you out, okay? I'm on a bit of a learning curve here. I know the Rory Gilmore who had to compile a pros and cons chart just to choose the right DVD rental on any given Saturday night. The idea of us just jumping into bed together with no discussion, no debate, no classification…that's not the version of you I know. And I guess I'm freaking out that you're not freaking out because that makes this whole experience feel…_insignificant_."

"**_Insignificant?_**Jess, I've been waiting for last night to happen for more than what? Six years?" He felt his overwrought muscles loosen as a vacillating smile shaped her porcelain face. "There is _nothing _insignificant about this."

He caught the back of an empty chair in a death-like grip. "So how are you not running away at a billion miles an hour?"

"You honestly think I just decided to sleep with you on a whim yesterday? That chocolate donut was good, but it was not a magical personality transformer."

Jess swallowed back the hot lava in his esophagus. "What are you trying to say?"

She inhaled slowly, filtering through the range of emotions that fluttered through her. "I've thought about this on overdrive since we ran into each other in that crosswalk—no, that's not true. You've been floating somewhere in the recesses of my brain since the night you pulled my pilfered copy of _Howl _out of your kleptomaniac back pocket…and I'm usually so good at ignoring you but it's become increasingly difficult since that kiss on New Year's Eve. I've been freaking out since January. Does that make you feel better? That's nearly seven months of freaking out. I'm the freak out expert. They're awarding me with a freak out trophy next week."

His eyes were morosely trained on the golden hues beginning to speckle the capricious sky. Rory followed his gaze, the view of the languid town helping to settle her mounting trepidation. "Jess, we've only had these erratic run-ins in the last four or five years, just snippets of our grownup post-breakup lives. You aren't the only one playing catch up here." She seized his chin, directing his vision back to her. "But if there is a fixed point in all of this, it is that I am _always_ freaking out when you are involved. The difference is I've finally learned to embrace certain forms of panic and work through them. I don't regret last night. Do you?"

He read the thin stripe of potential heartbreak in her infinite blue eyes as she waited for him. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Something he had been surreptitiously practicing in the stretch of years she spent at Yale, out of Yale, and on the front lines of the world's most volatile conflicts. Something she had desolately endured from the sidelines of their brief relationship, watching helplessly as he drifted below the destructive radar. What if they couldn't do any better this time? What if the waiting was less painful than the probable wreckage of actual disaster?

But could the worst possible endgame scenario taint the images of last night—her chestnut curls fanning out across the pillow, her dilated eyes begging him for release, the heat of her white skin as it fused with his?

"No, that's impossible. No regrets." His voice was thick and scratching. He looped his arms around her waist to restore the order of his dicey disposition.

"Good. You were scaring me, Mariano." She willingly stepped further into him.

His lips caressed an exposed spot of her swan neck. "I just want to do this right for once."

Jess felt her place a gentle kiss over his heart. "Me too. I promise you that."

"I—" His reply was unexpectedly thwarted by the scurrying figure that materialized from around the diner's exterior. "Oh sh—"

He tore Rory away from the large picture window with an exaggerated yank, launching her into his chest with a colliding momentum that sent them bowling into rows of rattling shelves. She stared up at him with a distressed ferocity painted in her enormous unblinking eyes. "Are you crazy?! What the—"

His mouth claimed hers in a hasty attempt to quiet her. He drew back slightly, whispering, "Shh. Mrs. Kim just rounded the corner at warp speed. She won't see us from here if we hold still."

Rory shook with inaudible laughter. "My God, you're afraid of her!"

"You bet I am! I'm not wearing a shirt! And you—I mean those are _not_ pants." He waggled a reproachful finger at her spandex-clad legs. "She would know what we've done and then vibe us forever."

"She's like five foot nothing. What could she possibly do to you?" Another giggle fit quaked through her.

His eyebrows were practically in his hairline. "Tell me you aren't the least bit terrified of that woman. I know that you are, don't try to deny it."

"Of course I am! But you? I thought the big bad city boy was far too rough and tumble for anyone in this one-horse town. I won't ever be able to look at you the same way. Lane will go—"

"Uh uh, nope, you are not talking to Lane about this." He arched his head over shoulder to examine the sidewalk from his clandestine lookout. "Coast is clear. Let's get upstairs before Taylor finds out that I've defiled you. I can't afford a lawyer right now and I'm too good looking for mug shots."

She allowed him to drag her around the perimeter of the diner in a vigilant path against the wall. "Jess! We're in our twenties! You are totally overreacting. No one cares what we do!"

He tossed a disbelieving look over his shoulder as he ducked under the checkered fabric. "It's cute how naïve you can still be, sweetheart."

"Oh shut up. I'll show you naïve."

And those were the words that had her shamefully racing into her hair appointment ten minutes later than scheduled, painstakingly avoiding her mother's shrewd look.


	8. To Have & To Hold

**_a/n: I am sooo sorry that I dragged on this one. For whatever reason I felt really unmotivated about writing this chapter, but as soon as I actually started, it all came so fast! I had a lot of fun with it, so not sure why I didn't get moving earlier than I did. Please accept my apologies and get reading! Wedding bells are ringing! _**

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"Mom, I swear, if you so much as _think_ about pulling out one more bobby pin, I—"

Lorelai threw her hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay, I promise to leave it alone! That woman gouged my poor scalp, kid. Have some sympathy for Mommy, please?"

Rory's eyebrows shot up. "That's funny coming from the woman who told me to 'suck it the heck up cause beauty is always pain' after the needle incident. I told you the straps were fine, but no, you couldn't leave them alone. You drew blood!"

"Look at me. Am I the one in white? Yep, I am. That means I get to do all the dress fittings I want, little lady. And let's not pretend that it was a scene from _The Shining_, okay? It didn't even need a Band-Aid!" A keen look cut across her face. "I'm on to you, by the way…"

Uh oh. She knew where her mother was headed with that tone of hers. "You're right, the straps needed shortened and I'm hardly scarred. Now let's make sure the bouquets are ready to go."

"Nope, not so fast. As much as I love the words 'you're right,' I'm much too wise for that trick."

"Mom—"

"Seriously, Rory, you had to see this one coming. I've kept my mouth shut all morning, but we've got this room to ourselves for the next few minutes and I can't hold it in any longer." Her eyes sparkling with merriment from her seat at the vanity table. "Now the real reason you squirmed through that alteration was because you wanted those straps nice and loose so your cleavage would be free to work its magic on the best man. Sure, the backless look is great, but a low neckline will really turn his head. Am I right?"

Her whole face felt like fire. "Mother! Really? I know you are excited for the honeymoon, but not all of us are as dirty-minded as you!"

"Hey! You know that as the bride, it is my duty to make sure the maid of honor gets laid after the reception! Something tells me though, that you—a classic overachiever—have already taken care of that."

"Eww, do you hear yourself? I think that duty should be renounced when the maid of honor is your own daughter!" Rory desperately wished for Sookie or Emily or Liz or _anyone_ to come in and interrupt this perturbing line of discussion.

But Lorelai was undeterred. "And honey, I am so glad that the two of you finally got that out of your respective systems."

"And that is because?"

A display of mimicked horror crinkled her countenance. "That is because we live in Connecticut, not West Virginia. We can't have cousins with sexual tension, now can we? That would just be wrong!"

Rory groaned abhorrently. "You've been trying to work that one in all weekend, haven't you?"

"You betcha!" She scooter closer and took her daughter's hand. "But I have the feeling that this isn't a case of getting it out of your system. And if you didn't hear me clearly last night, I'll say it again—it's okay with me. I want you to be happy and if that's with Jess, then we can be one big happy backwoods incest-filled family."

"You're disgusting."

"And you're evasive."

Sighing quietly, Rory forced the words out of her reticent throat. "At the risk of prompting an obnoxious I-told-you-so, yes…there is a Jess thing. I'm not sure if it will work out, but I want it to and I think he does too."

Lorelai's grin was uncontainable. "I am grudgingly choking back the obnoxious you-know-what. Luke is going to be thrilled! But you can't be the one that messes this up or the blueberry waffles may disappear forever and that's even worse than being gouged with hundreds of bobby pins."

Talk about pressure. Rory knew her mother meant that warning to be taken as glib and offhanded, but the weight of Luke's endorsement suddenly threatened her somersaulting stomach. Her torrid past with Jess had often muddied the waters between her mom and Luke, and that was before they were ever a couple. How much worse would it be if their relationship caused a rift between them now?

Sookie stumbled into the room with bubbling excitement and her mother was already elsewhere. Apparently the photographer—who was indisputably more competent and less worrisome than Kirk—was ready for them.

And the show must go on.

* * *

His tie was too tight and he was fairly certain that there were razor blades imbedded in the threads of his tuxedo pants. He hated formal clothes even more than he hated standing in front of 200 people who wanted his head in the gallows. Only for Luke's sake was he able to withhold the grimace that threatened to unleash itself on the crowd of stodgy onlookers before him. He figured it was a mutual ceasefire; their respect for his uncle temporarily eclipsed the tempting opportunity to pelt him with rotten vegetables from Doose's reject pile.

But every millimeter of prior discomfort was immediately erased at the sight of her in swishing chiffon. God, she was _stunning_. Her spotless white skin was perfectly set off by the deep shade of navy that billowed around her. She descended the aisle with regal poise, her russet locks partially pinned back in loose tendrils. He forgot all else—the pews dissolved, the stiffness at his collar went undetected. A physical vibration jarred his soul as the spark of her enchanting blue eyes unflinchingly set on his. It struck something so deep within him that it conjured an eroded vision of another wedding, that bombshell of a kiss and a hectic "welcome home."

It had probably been an afterthought, a flustered blurb…but those words she had unceremoniously shouted by the lake never really left him. Home had been always been a lost concept for him; not one of the various foul apartments Liz had dragged him through had ever represented much. He understood a place to crash, a lumpy mattress or a musty couch. But home? She had hurriedly called Stars Hollow his home that day, but that wasn't what he had actually heard. Home? It was anywhere with her.

She hailed him with a delicate smile, the tint of red on her lips petitioning for his complete indulgence. But then Jess felt his mouth literally fall open as the expanse of her slender back marched on past him. The dress appeared prim and demure from the front, but the deep v-shaped cutout from behind had him absolutely breathless.

As she fell into position next to Sookie, her deliberate look in his direction signaled that she had read the cravings that were clearly conducted over the planes of his face. And he found a conformation of shared desire somewhere in her fluttering lashes. The indistinct din of guests standing and the piano pounding out the wedding march barely registered in his clouded mind. While the entire room gasped and cried and applauded as Luke and Lorelai became man and wife, Jess couldn't help but be that much more enraptured with the exquisite maid of honor posted just beyond the spectacle of wedded bliss.

* * *

All of her nerves had melted away under the consistent potency of his rakish gaze. She stopped worrying about tripping in her heels or dropping the ring. She forgot to be concerned with a perfect delivery of her reception speech or to worry over her grandmother's reaction to the immodest cut of her dress. With the way his dark eyes faithfully charted her every step, Rory did not have the capacity to balance another competitive idea. It was just Jess, as handsome as she had ever seen him in a gray tux and a navy tie.

So when she realized that she had already reached her appointed destination without incident—and without even remembering much of the journey—she exhaled appreciatively. For once his reckless way of distracting her had served a positive outcome.

The doors split open in the back of the church and a puff of flouncing white garnered all of her attention. Rory felt an outpouring of powerful emotion at the surreal scene. Her mother was radiant. After all this time, the disappointments and the near misses, the duds and the devastating blows…this day was finally here. They had shared so much as an inseparable twosome, had laughed and loved and conquered the world together; but no matter what, this had always been her inmost desire—to see her mom this undeniably happy. This was Luke, the man who had stepped in and fixed her bike, cooked special birthday breakfasts, and helped her move into her very first dorm room. Tears welled in her eyes and her heart threatened to burst. Her family was whole.

The ceremony glided on without a mishap, although Rory did experience a short-lived bout of anxiety when the "speak now or forever hold your peace" was issued. If there was ever a wedding that should have skipped that ultimatum, it was possibly this one. But Lorelai, in all of her glory, turned towards the audience and drilled them with a "don't even think about it." The church erupted in laughter and Reverend Skinner continued with the vows.

And at last they were announced as Mr. and Mrs. Luke Danes. A glimmering tear dripped down her face as she watched them exchange a heartwarming kiss and then proceed up the aisle. A subtle jab from Sookie alerted her to her own delayed departure. She dashed to the center of the altar and slinked her arm into its secure place against Jess.

His trademark smirk was etched into his face. "Thinking about standing me up out here?"

She managed to sniffle and giggle simultaneously. "No! I was a little busy watching the bride and groom, okay?"

"Hmm. I was a little busy watching the maid of honor. She's even pretty when she cries."

Rory was doing more than her fair share of blushing this weekend. "I somehow doubt that."

His arm constricted, forcing the length of her own arm to meld with his side. "You calling me a liar, Gilmore? That's slander, you know."

"Yes, but it isn't in print and verbal defamation is usually too messy to prove in court." His growing grin let her in on the fact that she had impressed him. "What? I got an A in Communication Law."

He rolled his eyes. "And just when I think you've gotten a little cooler since high school…"

"Sorry to disappoint you, James Dean. This is who I am, take it or leave it."

They had reached the foyer but neither of them showed any interest in detaching their linked arms. His pulse hammered at her facetious words. If he had it his way, there would be no leaving it. Hadn't the universe been trying to thump that truth into his head for years now?

"Take it." He murmured tenderly, his lips polishing the rim of her ear. "I'll take it for sure."

* * *

_**a/n:**_

_**fluffy fluff fluff...but more angst in the next chapter!**_

_**Confession, I got teary as I wrote Rory's perspective on her mom getting married. This so should have happened on the show and I will forever be sad that it didn't. Luke & Lorelai are meant to be.**_

_**PLEASE REVIEW. Much love.**_


	9. I Like Your Crazy Hair

_**a/n: I changed my username for personal reasons, but this is the same story from the same writer!**_

**_Shoutout: I would have never thought to link Clara and April together without a fic called " Can't See the Forester for the Trees." Go read it, I highly recommend it! Thanks to fellow writer Hardys and Horcruxes for giving me permission to borrow from your creative world!_**

_**another one goes to my Lit professor who will never read this-thanks for making me read up on Naturalism last year. Glad I remembered some of those powerpoints so Jess can argue about them :)**_

* * *

She watched from afar with a blend of concern and amusement. An intervention could save someone's life, but Rory stalled for the sake of her own entertainment. It was just too good to meddle with…

"So you are honestly telling me that Naturalism has no place in literature? Stop teaching Jack London? Throw out _McTeague_? You can't be serious." He scraped an instinctive hand through his hair, destroying the well-ordered styling that she assumed Luke had coerced him into choosing for the day.

April's animated nod left no room for doubt. "Oh, I am one hundred percent serious. Call of the Wild is unbearably overrated, an obviously chauvinistic choice for the scholastic literary cannon." Jess snorted, but the younger girl was determined. "And anyone who defends McTeague is depraved, and yes, I acknowledge the irony in that statement. Naturalism was the worst era of American writing and I think it is all a big waste of time. It lacks accountability by making outlandishly unhindered allowances for each borish character."

The crooked line of his mouth was jumping to refute her reasoning, but the third party—Rory's personal favorite component to the heated discussion—beat him to it. "Was Call of the Wild the one with Balto in it?"

Even April looked appalled at that one. "Really, Clara? You did not just ask that."

"Oh, come on! I was kidding!" She laughed in that airy chiming way of hers, but her audience did not look amused or convinced.

Jess cut back in as if she hadn't spoken. "I'm not saying I agree with the philosophy behind the movement, but how can you so easily dismiss it as 'a big waste of time?' The deliberation between human nature and the animalistic constitution is more than compelling—"

"Do you live here again?"

His nostrils flared at Clara's repeated disruption. "Me?"

"Yeah, I remember you from a long time ago. Are you always this grumpy?" She sipped noisily on her sparkling cider as she stared him down.

Rory could smell the smoke metaphorically pumping from his ears. "And are you always th—"

"There you are, Jess!" She was practically shouting at him, but it was better than the alternative—bloodshed. "My mom wants a picture of us all at the head table."

He looked at her narrowly, his head dropping in revolt. "I was promised. No. More. Pictures."

"Not. My. Problem. Move it, soldier." She issued a mock salute, inciting a fit of giggles from the girls next to him.

"Fine. But I am done after this one, I swear. You," he turned back to face his cousin, "this isn't over. I haven't even started to work Stephen Crane into my argument yet."

"Bring it on." April offered a devious smile as he retreated.

Not to be outdone, Clara piped in. "Bye Jess!"

They had hardly progressed a two feet when he ground out his irritation between clenched teeth. "Why the heck was Stuart Little invited to this thing?"

"Uh, we're still in hearing range, Oscar." She shook her head with a tsk.

His hand settled on the small of her back. "Oscar?"

She wrapped an arm around his waist, weaving their bodies together as they picked through the green grass. "Yes, as in the grouch. And to answer your question, she's only here because April begged Luke to let her bring a friend. She doesn't know very many people here."

"And why in God's name does **my** cousin associate with that nauseating pipsqueak?"

Rory felt a mushy tug of delight at the vocalized pride in his familial relation to April—she knew he had grown up without that kind of attachment. "I don't know, Clara met her at the diner one night and they hit it off. I haven't exactly been around either, Jess."

"Huh. I expect you to know everything that happens with the village folk. Don't they send you a weekly newsletter or something?" His voice plummeted an octave as his head bowed closer to hers.

Even though the actual combination of his words had no sensual quality in them, the simple lowering of his voice scratching out so close to her ear was enough to set off a thousand synapses from within. "They stopped sending them to me after I missed back-to-back years of Revolutionary War reenactments. I've been blacklisted."

"What's truly alarming," he said, his warm breath tickling her cheek in the most distracting way, "is that I was kidding and I have a feeling that you are not."

She grinned in return. "You'll never know either. I'll take the secrets of Stars Hollow to my grave before I reveal them to a cynic like you."

His hand floated higher, finding the exposed cream skin that had been viciously soliciting his eyes for the whole evening. He applied a ghostlike pressure to her spine as he murmured into her hairline, "Don't underestimate my ability to persuade you otherwise."

She twisted slightly so that her lips were in striking range. "Your ability to…wait, is that Mrs. Kim?!"

Jess leapt away from her, his hands staggering into the night air as if a police officer had caught him in the act of some underhanded crime. Her laughter rang out unapologetically, harvesting several penetrating stares from a passing group of wedding guests. She clutched at her sides as she reeled with another chortling spell. "Oh my gosh, your face!"

His scowl did nothing to sober her glee. "This is why men don't tell women anything. We know that every confession is catalogued as future ammunition."

"Awwh, poor Jess." She sidled up to him. "How can I make it up to you?"

He pretended to be in deep thought as he tapped his chin with his index finger. "Let's see…you could tell your mother that I am no longer available for pictures. Can you manage that one?"

A ray of brightness entered her eyes, effectively exceeding every strand of twinkling lights strewn around the town square. "Consider it done."

He wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders. "Now why did that seem way too easy?"

"Well…that whole photo at the head table thing may have been somewhat fabricated…"

She knew she had earned his ridiculing snort. "Rory Gilmore! This is the second time I caught you lying about wedding photography! Sure, Kirk deserved it last time, but what did I do to deserve such cruel trickery?"

"Both instances were for the sake of preserving human life! You were seconds away from clocking Kirk with a Rocky Balboa right hook and Clara was about to meet a similar fate. Plus, April was tearing you apart in that debate and I'd hate to see you cry in public." Rory took pride in the horrified look that warped his features at her sentence's ending note.

"That harmless little girl making me cry? That's cute, but no."

Her shrug jostled his arm, but he held fast. "All I'm saying is that 'little girl' has a massive IQ and a love for academia. It's not like she was trying to sell you on the merits of reading Winnie the Pooh."

"Great, just what I need, the reincarnation of you. She better like Ernest if she knows what's good for her…unlike _some people_." He planted a short kiss on her jaw.

"Yeah Jess, like I'm supposed to take reading advice someone with crazy hair. Do you wash it? Why does it stick up like that?" She trailed a few fingers through his mussed spikes.

Her deadpanned intonation launched a roll of his eyes. "I'll call a Hemmingway truce if you promise to keep the evil munchkin references to yourself."

She let out a theatrical gasp. "I want that in writing, mister."

"Later."

Rory scrunched her brow at his trimmed tenor. "Then what are we doing now?"

His arm released her shoulders as he shifted to extend a hand in her direction. "May I have this dance?"

"I'm sorry, but who are you? What happened to the 'now I have you' attitude? I would think that dancing would fall into that category." Although her heightened tone registered shock, there was an underlying happiness in her disbelief.

He grabbed her hand despite her immobile posture, tugging her toward the dance floor. "What attitude?"

"You don't remember? I wanted you to go to the Winter Carnival and you insisted that you only went to town functions because you were after me…but once you had me…"

Jess had the decency to look slightly chagrinned. "Yeah, not one of my finest boyfriend moments, huh? Well haven't you heard? I'm much more mature these days."

A girlish giggle tumbled from her red lips as he swept her out onto the center of the floor and impulsively dipped her in a low arc. Her cerulean eyes were positively brimming with adoration as he brought her back up to his chest. "When did you learn to do **that**?!"

His usual smirk appeared. "It's a secret. I can't tell you more than one per day, and I've already made the mistake of trusting you with my Mrs. Kim phobia."

"Have I properly apologized for that yet?" She pressed the length of her body against his as she swayed in time to the crooning Ella Fitzgerald tune.

He wrapped her snugly in his embrace, drawing absent circles across the silky skin of her back. "I think you're making decent progress."

"Good. I aim to please." The earnest rasping that saturated her honey-like voice sent shivers through him. His hand plunged lower and lower, collecting speed like a rollercoaster going off the tracks. Her breath quickened against his neck as she aligned her hips more pliably with his.

"One of your many attractive qualities," he whispered into her fragrant hair. His eyes darted around to take stock of the others orbiting around them…no threats in sight…

Jess sought out the alluring bend of where her neck curved into her shoulder, his mouth marking it gently. She felt her bones liquefy, her grip on his upper arms intensifying as her weight rested heavily on his strength. He repeated the action, knowing he was partially concealed by the draping of her amber locks. She tasted so damn sweet.

"Mmm, _Jess_." Her whimper of satisfaction threw his pulse into an agitated state. The way she could utter his name like some perfumed prayer…it would surely kill him. He was too young to suffer from heart failure, right?

He faintly heard TJ yelping in the background, something inane about the Electric Slide being next on the set list. Lifting his head just millimeters higher, he hummed a reluctant—"C'mon, let's get out of here."

The hazy confusion in her eyes forced a smug grin across his face. He kissed her cheek and muttered, "Somewhere more private, perhaps?"

Rory nodded slowly, her hands tracing up and down the lean muscles that were shielded by his thin dress shirt. "Lead the way."

With his arms still secure around her tiny frame, they hobbled as one unit in an irrefutable path away from the clanking of champagne flutes and silverware. In what seemed like mere seconds later, Rory found herself jammed against the diner's brick exterior wall that bordered the alley. She was pleasantly pinned in place with one of Jess' arms on either side of her.

"And we were right about…here." His panted sentence trailed off as his mouth went to work on her collarbone. Her hands massaged his shoulders, brutally scoured up through the roots of his hair, and then stroked down his sides and fisted the rich material of his shirt. It wasn't enough.

She took charge, her hands moving to cup his face, mesmerizing him with the aggressive vigor in her touch as she hauled his face up to hers. Jess willingly obeyed her unspoken demand; after all, that red shade of lipstick had been making him dizzy with desire from the moment she strutted through the church doors. He was more than happy to act on that swelling level of fascination. Her mouth readily opened to his, their tongues crashing in abandon. With whirling visions of the prior night's events beating in his head, Jess dug his fingers into her hips and nudged himself nearer. The resulting moan left him even more lost in his need for an impending crescendo. He broke away from her, his eyes feasting on the sated disorientation of her glazed expression.

Rory gulped hungrily for air. All of the bantering quips from before fell away as the seriousness in his smoldering brown gaze stilled her racing mind. That look, that heady channeling of sequestered emotion, it nearly brought her to her knees. He was the only one who could swipe all rational thoughts from her head like this. It was terrifying and addicting.

He slid a hand through her hair, toying with the tips of a solitary chestnut curl. She felt an overflowing breach in the walls of her soul. "Jess…I—"

But a sequence of angry expletives tunneled through her attempted revelation. Her mouth fell open as her eyes detected the source of all the disconcerting noise. "**_Connor_**?"

Her ex stalked through the dim alley, his broad shoulders hunched and his face hardened in a glowering line. He didn't bother with an explanation, didn't even cast his steel eyes on her. His intended target was unquestionable; he trudged forward with a harrowing purpose, angling straight for Jess.

* * *

_**r.e.v.i.e.w. thanks for reading!**_


	10. Grayscale Wreckage

_**Sorry to keep you waiting. My Rory/Jess feels have been playing hide and seek, but I buckled down and tapped this one out finally!**_

_**The end is near friends. The end is near, but not here.**_

* * *

It was a hallucination surely, a surreal manifestation of Hemingway's scrawling matador narratives. But if this was reality, Jess knew he didn't want to dodge this raging bull. No, he'd rather take a swing at the venomous beast. His fists curled in hard edged defense.

Rory's cries warbled through the confined space, bouncing and flitting in a sporadic tango off the severe concrete.

"Connor, **_no_**." She lodged herself between them, her back to Jess with white hands palming Connor's chest. His brooding eyes drilled into Jess for a moment longer before his face, which was quickly adopting the shade of pickled beets, tilted down to defy Rory's manic appeal for retreat.

"What kind of fool do you take me for? You asked me for a favor, Ror. A loan, a small thing for a friend of yours. **A friend. **So I take care of it, assign this 'old friend' Jess to one of my people. Just to have some measly intern correct me in a meeting, a _corporate_ meeting, telling me that Jess is a **man **and not some sorority sister or something. Didn't think to mention that minor fact, baby?"

A rollicking rage swamped Jess' senses. A steady stream of red tinted the whole scene. He wasn't the matador anymore, he was the blasting bull.

Jess took Rory's willowy arms in his hands and tugged her backwards. "You don't talk to her like that, okay?"

"I can handle this, Jess." Her chastising gaze left him empty and scorched.

"Yes, _Jess_. She can handle this." The sneer in that prick's voice made him wild with loathing.

Rory squared her shoulders. "Have you been drinking, Connor? This isn't you. Let's go sit down and talk about this, okay?"

"No, Rory, no, I don't want to effing _talk_ about it! My girlfriend is trying to pull one over on me, and I'm not gonna take that sitting down. I want to have it out with the rat she's been slumming it with."

Jess leaned sidelong against the coarse brick, the fight draining out of him and flowing unswervingly into the awaiting gutter. "Your girlfriend? _Girlfriend_. Huh."

Rory wheeled back in his direction with beseeching blue eyes. "Jess—"

Connor took a lumbering step forward with snapping teeth flashing in the glow of a nearby streetlight. "Yeah, buddy, my girlfriend. Our anniversary is next week."

He felt a deflating force bearing down on his punctured lungs. History was destined to repeat itself, right? She would always belong to someone else.

In an uncharacteristic burst of energetic defiance, Rory stomped her heel into the crackled pavement and pierced Connor's chest with a manicured nail. "That is enough! You do not waltz in here and spin this on its head, you deceitful cretin! _You _cheated on _me_, remember? Everyone knew it, all of our friends, all of New York! And you chose _her_. I think I was more than accommodating in all of this, letting you have your little escapades with the temp secretary extraordinaire and bowing out gracefully—"

His hand clamped down on her wrist as he towered over her. "Ror, baby, I—"

She shook him off easily. "No! Don't, okay? We've been over for almost six months, Connor. Go home, sleep off the hangover, and don't ever call me. Ever."

He wilted into himself, an overgrown cactus that had been dislocated from its desert plot. "I'm sorry, Ror. I messed it up, messed us up."

"We wouldn't have made it anyway." She stood firm with finalized conviction. "Please just find your driver and leave. You shouldn't have come here. This day was supposed to be perfect."

She brushed past both men without another word. Jess choked back the boulder of hostile impulse that blocked his windpipe and watched with sudden detachment as Connor crawled back around the building in defeat.

Yet Jess didn't feel like the victor. Rory's dismissal somehow seemed to comprehensively include him too.

* * *

"Rory, wait! Rory…"

She whirled around, her jaw clenching in stony despondency. "Not now, Jess."

He futilely swiped at her arm. "Hey, just a second, please, I—"

"I said not now!" Her eyes scurried to evaluate the impact of their commotion as they approached the spangled gazebo, all decked out in tulle and twinkle lights. It seemed heir voices had been mercifully swallowed up in the glitzy swell of an old jazz song. With methodical tenacity, Rory forced a calming intake of breath and corresponding release. She continued in a perilously low tone. "In the next five minutes I have to be sure that the getaway car is parked in the right place and properly outfitted, both with luggage and the customary tacky decor. Then I would like to paste on a happy face for the sake of my mother, who will possibly attempt to derail her own honeymoon if she thinks I'm upset about something. So to boil it down for you, I need space."

Jess stepped forward with a grave look. "I get it, okay? He's a jerk and he shouldn't have come here like that. Let me help with the car and—"

"Jess, stop." She squeezed her eyes shut, both to ward off the threat of crystalized tears and to effectively block his downturned expression from view. The cutting betrayal was too fresh; he wasn't going to crumble her gritty resolve. "You doubted me back there. I saw it. You were shutting down the second he called me his girlfriend. I can't…after all I've said and done in the last 24 hours…you still don't trust me."

Silence. A calloused palm drifted in a spectral stroke against her arm. The shutter of her eyelids rapidly lifted as she took a sharp step to the side. His hand coasted aimlessly in the comatose summer air, a sadly absent gesture that sounded like an inharmonious clatter in the presence of the smoothly roaring saxophone backdrop.

"Rory…"

His almond eyes ravaged her face in an evocative melancholy regard. She felt paralyzed at the slight slump of his shoulders and the enduringly forlorn sinking of that warped mouth. "I know, Jess. It sucks. But apparently this is the mold we're stuck in. I've disappointed you too many times before, played the right cards at the wrong times. I thought we were past this…I thought that when I stayed this morning, when I told you I'm not running this time…" Her breath abandoned her with a rocketing momentum. In a scarcely audible folding of her heart, she managed to whisper, "I'm not mad at you."

"Then give me another chance." He didn't make another move to touch her, and she mentally thanked him for that. She knew that would be her undoing, the devastation that was his skin on hers.

Her saturated eyes stormed transversely over the grass at her feet as she crossed her arms protectively against the cumbersome mass of his hoarse plea. "No."

A vehement curse spilled from his tongue. "Why? _Why_, Rory, you can't—"

"No! Okay? I said no. We're family now, and I don't mean that in the 'ha-ha we're step cousins' stupid way. My mom—the **only** person who has consistently loved me and supported me no matter what—is married to your uncle. And I know how much Luke means to you. He looks at you like you're the son he never had and I can see that you feel the same way about him."

Jess shoved his hands in his tuxedo pockets, his Adam's apple dipping furiously. "What are you saying?"

Rory tucked her arms more tightly against her abdomen as she rocked back and forth. "I don't want to hurt them with this, with us. I don't want them to take sides in the series of explosive confrontations that are sure to shadow this kind of mistake."

"So now this is a mistake? You were practically beating me over the head with assurances that you wouldn't regret this." His chin jutted with insolent challenge.

She flinched at the highly-strung chord battering his typically off-the-cuff cadence. "I didn't think I would. But I can't keep making those same assurances day after day after day. I can't keep begging you to believe in us, Jess. It hurts too much to know I'm the only one who does."

"Yeah, well I'd hardly call this painless." He rifled a hand through his scalp, then glanced up at the frosty spread of stars that had incidentally been dappled across the sky for the special occasion. They just seemed cold and unfeeling now, completely bereft of any lasting magic. "So what? I'll see you at Christmas dinner? That's it, game over?"

Her heels sunk tragically deeper into the sodden ground. Her stomach wrenched at that abortive proposition. But then she relived the grisly portrayal in the alley—the shooting look of dented hope engraving itself into the lines of his forehead and the easy surrender in the sagging of his frame—the renewed stab of loss pummeled her at the core.

With a feeble nod, Rory took an emblematically regressive step toward the DJ. "I'm sorry, Jess. This is not how I imagined the ending to this day."

His blistering scoff did little to alleviate the cresting pressure behind her eyes. "At least we agree on that point."

Squinting over her shoulder, she watched as her mom pranced in a diagonal path over the dance floor and threw her arms around the grinning groom. A silver tear escaped the fortress of Rory's heavy lashes. Turning back to Jess with a resigned fatality, she stammered—"I-I should go. I guess I…I'll see you around."

She had barely taken three quivering steps before his hand fastened around hers. "This is what I want, Rory. I'll prove it to you, I promise. Let me prove it to you."

Stealing one last arduous glimpse of his seamlessly constructed face—the hooded hazelnut eyes, the stubborn wave of his dark chocolate hair, the chiseled set of his jaw, that alluring pull in the corner of his lips—she carefully extracted herself from his grip. "I'm not sure you can."

Then she was off again, practically jogging her way across the square. And this time, he didn't follow her.


	11. Then He Appeared

_**this was supposed to be the last chapter, but of course it became long and unresolved and grrrr these two...you know how they can be. SO all that to say that there will be one more chapter after this one!**_

_**Not to be *that* whiny writer, but the reviews have been dwindling a bit. Huge thanks to the consistent ones! Just remember that feedback [with some detail] is the most motivating thing there is to get us creative types moving. Tell me what you think and we'll see chapter 12 that much sooner. love you all :)**_

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Her hands rose in an instinctive curve above her head, parting loosely in an elongated stretch. A stolen glance downward triggered a satisfied smile—she had met her deadline by less than thirty seconds.

A button flashed green on the phone that was chaotically wedged into the corner of her cluttered credenza. Rory sighed and clicked the corresponding number on the keypad. "Yes, Sharon?"

"Someone's here to see you, Miss Gilmore. Just checking if you're still available."

She bit down on her lip and pressed the heel of her hand to the mounting sinus pressure residing between her eyes. The nasally twang that seeped through that speaker set her on edge, but she obstinately refused to follow in her grandmother's footsteps and fire someone for trivial annoyances like thick accents and stifling southern manners. "Yes, I'm still here. And please call me Rory."

The line crackled, then went dead. An ingrained traditional Georgian upbringing kept that woman from respecting Rory's desire for a first-name basis type of relationship. It made her crazy to be so formally addressed all the time, but that exasperation was understandably augmented by the mere fact that it was nearly five on a Friday afternoon.

As her mind played over each harrowing moment of insanity that had occurred over the last few days, her small satisfied smile returned. The quickening rhythm of fax machines and copiers and coffee and keyboards composed this irresistible medley of addictive pandemonium. It was her favorite form of neurosis and she felt right at home.

An abrupt knock sounded on the casing of her doorway. Oh, right. She had a visitor. "Come in!"

And then her least favorite form of neurosis decided to enter the world she had just been extolling. Funny how that sort of blinding contrast could so quickly cripple all conscious thought.

"Jess?"

He looked so indestructibly nonchalant, a thoughtless recipe of denim and leather loosely braced against the dark wooden frame of her door. There was something dangerously hypnotic about the way he filled the space. Everything else suddenly felt smaller and less significant.

"Hey, sorry to barge in like this…but calling ahead isn't really my style." His wiry smirk was governed with a barely visible thread of fleeting caution. Even that insight did little to calm her roiling stomach—to her, he always had the upper hand.

Rory cleared her throat with a scrap of self-sustaining oxygen. "Yeah, I'm aware of that."

The languid movement of his veiled gaze raked across her office. He expelled a deep breath and pinned her with an unsettled tide in those infinite whisky eyes. "Is now a good time?"

"I—well, yes. Sure. Do you want—would you like to sit?" She gnawed petulantly on the inside of her cheek, her own words from the morning of her mother's wedding coming back to her in a lightning bolt of frank indignity: _But if there is a fixed point in all of this, it is that I am always freaking out when you are involved_. What was it about him that promptly bungled her basic ability to form cohesive sentences?

He lifted an ambiguous shoulder before leaving his self-assured post and sinking into the plush chair stationed in front of her desk. Their eyes met in a wordless standoff of masked observation. She refused to break the stalemate. This was his idea, not hers. She wasn't taking the lead this time.

"I thought you were on the 57th floor." The forced casual buoyancy in each syllable just sounded flat.

She cocked a quizzical eyebrow. "You remembered that? From…"

The smirk resurfaced, but in closer proximity she could see the subtle twitch beneath his jaw. He was nervous too. Leaning his forearms onto the mahogany surface of the desk, he answered slowly. "From the day I saw you in the intersection a few blocks from here. You were going to a meeting, but I bribed you with coffee."

"Oh. Right." She turned to click through her email inbox, senselessly reaching for any viable distraction. "The owners of that place should really give you some kind of discount. They've gained a devoted customer thanks to you."

Jess fought a full-on smile. As much as he wanted to dwell on the enthusiastic approval in her tone, it wasn't what he had come for. "Call me an unsung hero. So why are you on the 59th floor? I had to go through several phases of attempted intimidation to find you. What's with the misinformation?"

"It's called a weed out process. Gosh, someone needs to train those receptionists better, because clearly the system isn't being properly enforced."

There was a teasing lilt in her voice, but he knew the ploy well. Deflection could be Rory Gilmore's gold medal event if the Olympics ever chose to expand their categories to include verbal sports. "It's true. All I had to do was mention how much I love homemade peach cobbler and I was automatically sent in."

He was pleased to see a grin accompany that roll of shimmering blue eyes. "Yes, well Sharon is not exactly a hard sell."

"She's not the one I'm worried about." His voice was small and low as his gaze scrawled over the stacks of paper before him.

The incessant clicking of her mouse halted. He thought he would drown in the aggrieved sense of desolation that emoted straight out of her face and unswervingly into his soul as she besieged him with that unearthly shade of sapphire. "Jess, why did you come here? We hashed this out already, didn't we? I thought we agreed that we'd see each other over the holidays."

"Huh." He stroked the stubble on his chin in false concentration. "I don't remember coming to any sort of official agreement."

The corners of her mouth dipped with morbid acquiescence. The entire exchange could be rapidly descending to a point of irretrievability. Sitting up with redoubled efforts and banishing the glib quality from his words, Jess grasped both of Rory's small hands and held them tightly. "I didn't come here to fight, Rory. I swear I'm not trying to stir anything up or put any added strain on what you've optimistically deemed a strictly platonic relationship. I only want two things."

He paused, unconsciously licking his lips as he watched her bite down on the plump lower half of her own mouth. She nodded mutely, an iron look present in those penetrating orbs.

"Number one—why is your office two floors higher than expected?"

Rory's head jolted distrustfully to the side. "That's really what you want to know?"

"Yep." He could feel the tension in the jerky fidgeting of her fragile hands, but there was no way he was liberating her this soon—let her remember what the vibrant meeting of their skin felt like. If she really wanted to live without him then he would find a way to accept her choice, but Jess was planning on making that decision as excruciatingly difficult as possible.

She inhaled with striving force. "I'm in a different division now. The 57th floor is made up of International Affairs and Global Correspondence."

"So you were transferred? What division is on the 59th floor?" His excitement was tangible and for once he didn't care to hide it. If Jess could shed the old façade of detached aversion for the sake of one person and one purpose, this was it, this was his last stand. She had believed it once before. Rory was the only one who had seen through his coarse exterior in the past. He was banking on a part of that old flame still sparking in the feverish electricity that had marked their interactions both then and now.

"This is Domestic Policy and U.S. Government." Her shy smile made him fizz over with anticipation.

He felt her hands marginally relax as he inclined toward her. "And? Are you still a correspondent? A regular Jack Kerouac getting an up-close look at all the amber waves of grain this nation has to offer?"

A miniscule chuckle broke free. "No, I'll travel some, but I'm not a correspondent. I'm an assistant editor, which counts for a lot when the chief editor is a scarcely-functional alcoholic who takes a liberal revolving door approach to the job."

"When did this all happen?" His thumb slipped in a revolt across the impossibly soft skin residing over the back of her hand. A blush tinged the pale hollow of her cheeks. _Success_.

He bit back his desire for mocking and shook his head in encouragement as she began. "I talked to my boss at the end of August. It was after a…_risky_…trip to Syria, and I knew I couldn't take much more."

The facts that she had left unspoken launched his heart up into his throat. The thought of her not coming back…

She squeezed his hands, the shock of the unexpected comfort almost outdoing the actual soothing effect of her response to the labored look that had apparently made his anxiety known. "Everyone was very understanding when I said I was done with the field, but I never expected anyone to try to place me elsewhere. By the end of that workday, my editor told me I had a meeting with his superiors early the next morning. It all snowballed from there—several rounds of interviews, different aptitude tests, shadowing some team leaders—but it all worked out. They reassigned me by mid-September and I've been here for three weeks now."

"Do you love it?"

Rory was taken aback by his candid blend of sincerity and directness. "Yes. Even when we're down to the wire, it's a yes."

A smile carved into his thin mouth, reaching all the way up into his vigilant eyes. "I'm glad to hear it, Rory. Really, really glad."

"Thanks Jess. I kind of owe it to you…_again_." But there was no resentment in her tone, just honest appreciation. "So that was one. What's number two?"

"All I ask—" he let his fingers tenderly trail over her hands as he gradually let go, "is that you hear me out. If this is the last thing I ever ask of you, will you please listen first and then decide?"

She gave him a warning look, a bit of befuddlement entering her gaze. "Okay."

He stood up, his hand seeking out something that was tucked into his back pocket. With a consuming dose of nostalgia, Rory realized he was uncurling a pocket-sized edition of a crisp novel. The pages were fresh and snowy, the cover mostly in grayscale with a thin band of vivid blue wrapping from the front cover around to the spine and beyond. "You should really invest in a messenger bag or something, Jess. I promise you that manly methods of book transportation do exist."

"This works just fine for me. But since it is yours now, you may transport it however you like." The lean strength of his arm stretched over the chasm of her desk, the book offered to her in the sinewy motion of his artful hand. Her breath rattled like a locomotive, her whole chest heaving in an obscene response to what happened next; her fingers fell around the smooth cover, enfolding its richness in her palm as the author's name swam into focus. _Jess Mariano_.

This book—his thoughts, his words, his essence—created a physical bridge between his side of the desk and hers. Both sets of tentative hands were locked around this tangible manifestation of what must be _their_ story. The look in his weathered eyes, the embedded image of a familiar gazebo positioned as cover art, and the title…

It was silly really, just paper and ink and nothing else. No bizarre thunderbolt of magic, only a book.

But that title.

_Goodnight, Dodger_.

"Jess…"

Its weight sunk fully into her hand as he submitted the paperback into her comprehensive command. Rory's eyes raced back and forth in a seditious pattern. Every sound line of reverberating reasoning that had been fighting against him just moments before had gone eerily silent.

"Look, I know this is probably too little too late…" he pushed his hair irritably away from his forehead. "All I can say is that from the moment I stepped into your room that first night I spent in Stars Hollow, I knew I had stumbled across someone significant. I didn't want to fall in love with you, Rory, but you left me no other choice. When you enter my world, no matter how much older we are, I'm utterly blinded to everything else, everyone else. If you would just read it…just read it and if you can tell me that we're better off alone, then I'll never bother you again."

Her lips were shaking as she gripped at something that felt less like a book and more like a smoldering refrain of deliverance. "How…how is this possible, Jess? There's no way you wrote this and had it published in..." Rory began counting the months backwards, time falling away like transient stardust.

A weak laugh tumbled out of him. "I, well…I started it a long time ago. A long, long time ago. And with all the revisions, additions, and omissions that came down through the years…I could never find the right way to end it. Nothing ever seemed fitting enough, you know? But that changed this summer."

"So y-you found it? The ending?"

He stared into her wide eyes, the childlike tempo that warped her voice provoking him in a way that was neither harmful nor reassuring. "I know it sounds unlikely, but yes, I did. When you walked away from me that night at the wedding I…It was like a bulldozer of incentive discarded into my lap and I've never been more sure of anything. Please, just read it."

A reactionary throb of tears dithered behind her rapt scrutiny. "Jess…what if, if this doesn't change…"

"Then it is what it is, right?" His smile was a faltering glimpse of everything new and old and perilous. "Think of yourself as the very first critic to get her hands on the sophomore novel of a relatively unknown beatnik. You're holding the only public copy, Miss Gilmore. I'd ask you to be unbiased, but…"

Rory hugged the paperback to her bursting heart. "But it's a little late for that, isn't it?"

He nodded grimly. "I believe in us, Rory. The boy who wrote the introduction didn't know how to have faith, but the man who wrote the ending is willing to wager it all on this one bet. Don't underestimate him."

She leaned over the desk—a carnal barrier that signified so much more—and wisped a feathery kiss to his cheek. "I'll read it."

"All of it? No matter what?" His timorous apprehension was surprisingly palpable.

"All of it, I promise."

He took a parting step back toward the door. "Thank you…for…I don't know, for even giving me a second look all those years ago. I know it was sort of a disaster for you."

"No," her breath left her in a violent spurt, "Jess, that's not—"

His smirk was bolstered with an indiscernible source of saddened control. "Let's not start this now. Read it. I'm better in writing…the verbal thing, it comes and goes."

She withheld her sob of jumbled anguish until the last of his footfalls had evaporated along the empty corridor. This book…it had the power to destroy her.

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_**click and talk to me**_


	12. Every Last Word

_**a/n: the grand finale. I wrote this is strange fragments, then went back and connected them with additional detail...which is NOT how I usually write, but it just came to me like that. Sigh.**_

_**please leave a review! Hearing from you all has made this a fantastic experience.  
MUCH LOVE :)**_

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It only took four days.

Jess had assumed it would be a week at least, if not more. A very defeatist portion of his brain had suspected he'd never see her again. It was hardly a sure thing, this vulnerable expose laid out so plainly for her to pick apart; he imagined she'd sit in some artsy SoHo coffee shop and crease that delicate forehead in derision as she skimmed a page full of dismal mediocrity, turning back to her pretentious blueberry scone when she couldn't bear to read another sentence of his melodrama. He had been in a harried state for 96 hours straight, swiftly disintegrating into a nauseous disquiet with each tick of the second hand on his wristwatch. But that was until now.

"Hi." It came out too clipped, too obligatory. She wasn't smiling.

"Hi. Welcome to Truncheon Redux." The heaping sense of de ja vu nearly suffocated him. Her showing up like this, an interloper in what had served as his only place of solace, throwing him off kilter with that withering stare..

"You were _beaked_ by a _swan_?!" Maybe he should have taken the withering stare a little more seriously.

Jess let out a long groan. "How did I know that was coming? In more than three hundred pages, that's the first thing out of your mouth."

"A swan! Really, you couldn't have told me that?"

"No. And now I'm wishing you still didn't know." He scanned the store, relieved to see the place was rather empty. The escalating hostility in her vocalized protests would hardly be good for business.

A vein bulged in her otherwise faultless forehead. "That was worth the fight we had? Your precious dignity always came first, didn't it?"

"Would it be insensitive for me to point out that this incident has been over for more than seven years? The statute of limitations must have kicked in by now." Jess shoved away from the front counter and ambled through the nearest row of bookshelves.

She huffed after him. "God, you are infuriating."

"I know." He spun around when he felt they had delved far enough in to claim a smidgen of privacy. " I'll let you give me a new black eye if it'd make you feel better."

"Hold on, you might want to save that offer for my opinion regarding page…" the familiar cover swiveled before him as she yanked her copy free from her purse and flipped indiscriminately through the novel. "Ah, yes, page 191."

He winced in agonizing expectation. "Which is?"

"Our incidental meeting on the bus. You know, the cozy ole bus you rode all the way to California."

He clung to his shield of sarcasm as dim awareness poked at his gut—this was not ideal. "To be fair, I did have to switch busses at a terminal once or twice."

"_Jess_." The fuming heat in her glare made him squirm.

"Right, sorry." He propped himself against a section of pompous poetry that Matthew had insisted upon stocking. "Um…what would you like discuss?"

She was raging fury from head to toe. "How about the part where you just **sat there** and let me flail around idiotically while you stashed that pathetic duffel bag under the seat and said **nothing** about your impromptu decision to bolt across the country?! I mean, some part of me realized that after the fact…that…that the last time I saw you doubled as some caustic overlap in your journey out of my life. But to read it like that, to know it for sure…you said **_nothing_**!"

"I know. I couldn't." He shook his head forlornly, coveting a more substantial defense. Too bad he didn't have one.

"Why not? Why freaking not?" Her tone had lessened into something that rang louder with desperation than it did anger. Jess wasn't sure which scared him more.

But he didn't flinch. "You know why. I was a coward. I couldn't bear to watch your face crumple with the crushing disappointment that I had personally placed there."

"Did you just quote your own book?" She blinked down at the page before her.

"Not verbatim. But the book is autobiographical. Meaning it quotes me, not the other way around."

She blasted him with a threatening look. "Thanks Webster, you're really helping your case by correcting me."

"Look I'm sorry, Rory, I am. I wasn't in a good place then and unfortunately, you ended up being the collateral damage in my repulsively foreseeable descent…but you are also the catalyst for everything good that's happened since then." His level of desperation was rising to match hers.

Her chin whooshed upward through the stilted air. "That was another quote, wasn't it?"

He shrugged. "I already told you, the book is me."

"Well the book is full of crap and so are you." Her vehemence was more intimidating than he'd admit aloud.

"Does that mean you didn't like it?" he asked, playing off the significance of that question with a smirk.

Rory narrowed her eyes into precarious slits as she shifted her stance. "I'm sorry, but there is no way you had feelings for me from the moment I called you Dodger. That's absurd, soul mates at barely seventeen."

A taut contraction in his lungs sent him reeling. "Huh. That part wasn't supposed to make you mad."

"Jess, it was only the second time I'd ever spoken to you. We didn't even know each other."

"I knew enough." His tone left no space for argument but apparently that wasn't deterring her crusade.

She studied him with scrupulous surveillance. "Honestly? That whole time…despite Dean and how much you hated the town and my mom and the fact that I was a total goody two-shoes geek? I thought I bugged you."

An exhaled snort of laughter stumbled out of him. "Oh, you bugged me alright. You bugged me **because** you were with Dean and you loved that appalling town and defended your mother and tried to covert me to your goody two-shoes ways. And the feelings…they bugged me the most."

Jess was relieved to finally witness a softening in those vast blue eyes. He tugged on her free hand, holding it hostage against his chest. She staggered closer in a chain reaction, astonishing him when she didn't fight his grip. "What else, Rory? Tell me everything."

She shivered as his warm breath sifted through the curtain of her bangs. "Your portrayal of Miss Patty had me laughing so hard I was crying."

"If only I could eradicate those traumatic encounters from my memory." He spoke quietly, his muscles tensing involuntarily at the sensation of her slanting chestnut curls skimming over his arm.

"The stuff about Logan was…harsh…yet accurate. I couldn't see it then, you know?" Her abridged admission of regret washed over him with a bittersweet reverence.

"I know," he nodded with a dour smile. "Trust me, I fully understand the aching clarity that comes with hindsight. That was undoubtedly the book's ongoing theme if we must apply some literary deconstruction."

"Jess…is this true?" Rory pulled away slightly with a creasing frown, her other hand weakly flapping the novel before her. "Every word in this book is absolutely, one hundred percent, inescapably and undeniably true?"

"Every last word." He stubbornly clasped her hand with a fierce persuasion. She held his very soul, had spent four crucial days with his bleeding heart defenselessly splattered through those pages. This was it.

A flurry of panic-stricken words flooded out of her. "Don't lie to me, please, I need to know. Was there a part of this that was amplified, blown up for the sake of readers or critics or—"

"Come on, Rory, you know I don't give a damn about any of that. All of it is authentic, even down to the placement of the friggin commas. Every last scribble was mine, every paragraph, each and every bit of it…just you and me, no embellishment necessary."

"You changed my name." Her chastened expression seemed to acknowledge the irrelevance of that particular objection, yet she offered no retraction.

Jess tried to retain a straight face but his quirking lips wouldn't cooperate. "Parts of it are a little…raw. It seemed wise to take proper measures and avoid a potential lawsuit. Just in case."

"Just in case I stormed in here trying to slap you?" She was virtually smiling back now.

"Hey, I knew there'd be trouble if I unlocked the Pandora's Box of previous sins…"

Her eyes momentarily dropped to the floor. When that glimmering set of cerulean dynamite came back to examine him, he was surprised to observe a film of tears welling there. "Jess…the ending…you really meant it all? About waiting? You said it's been 'the chisel that's ruthlessly carved out your worst parts.' And…that you'd…that you'd keep waiting until…"

"Until they put me in a pine box. It's all true. _Every last word_, Rory." His voice box splintered with the enormity of everything he'd ever wanted standing right there in front of him.

She inched forward. "If I was in a nursing home and I called you and asked you to be with me…"

His eyebrows danced higher. "Well I'd be disappointed that we missed out on the prime of our sex lives—not that such a small fact would keep me from making a pass at you—but I'd still come."

A sniffling chuckle erupted from her enthralling pink mouth. "You're ridiculous."

"You're worth it."

Rory sighed heavily. "What if we don't work out? If we give it a real shot and we end up hating each other and—"

He pressed a thumb to her lips, the rest of his hand cupping her quavering chin. "Now what's happened to your reading comprehension, Gilmore? I've tried to hate you, remember? I think that glorious stage of despondency dominates all of Chapter 26 and most of 27. It won't happen. I've never been able to hate you, not even when I've wanted to. And you're here, aren't you? Shouldn't you hate me by now?"

Her eyelids drooped shut as a singular tear glided along her porcelain cheek. "I have one more question."

"Anything you need," he whispered raggedly.

She sought out his eyes again. "Will you please sign my copy?"

He smirked, his hands fisting her sweater as he drew her body against his. "In a minute."

A bursting smile shaped her countenance before her lips rose up in a culminating deluge against his. Jess ravaged her with frenzied kisses, a smile of his own shaping the long-awaited clash of bumping foreheads and open mouths. Rory's indulgent whimper fueled his yearning desire. He backed her against the adjacent shelf, books shuddering and tumbling in reply.

Her mouth parted from his. "As remarkable as death by book impalement would be, I have to say that I'm not quite ready to meet my demise."

He grinned at her breathless confession. "Too much to live for?"

"Yeah, like the sequel. And coffee. In that order."

"So you think there is a sequel in the works, huh?" His grin broadened.

She let her lips ghost along his jaw. "I'm betting on it."

"Good," his hand snuck below the hem of her shirt and skated along her spine. "Me too."

Rory's electric gaze swept over his face with a solemn affection. "It was absolutely flawless, Jess. I can't believe you wrote about us."

He watched her keenly, his whole being marvelously aflame. "I wrote about you. I had to. It was inevitable, really."

"The book? Or us?" Her fingers smoothed back the dark hair around his ear.

"Both," he murmured as he recaptured her mouth.

And just like that, the ending was already under revision. That old relentless spark crackled, pleading for another shot of evoked ecstasy. Like a comet flashing beneath his closed eyes, Jess recalled the New Years kiss that had catapulted them ahead to this moment—the impact of that second, just a brief tick of the clock on the first night of the year. It was all he had needed to _know_.

"I love you, Rory. I always have."

She beamed up at him. "I love you too, Jess. I always will."

That girl with _Howl_ in her bedroom and "Dodger" on her tongue was the girl he'd never get over. Now he'd never have to.


End file.
